A B O U T
Geena Wilkinson’s work is an exploration of the banal through domesticity, making use of various traditional fine art mediums, often with food as the subject, as a way of highlighting our temporality.
In order to preserve intimacy of the social space that encompasses us, the objects that Wilkinson reproduce function as still lives - snapshots of moments in our past. The artworks speak to the passing of time by memorialising perishable confectionary delights - a collection of little pleasures from daily life that never make it into the archive. They draw from the nostalgia embedded within memory such that when you encounter one of these artworks you are instantly transported back to the moment of last consumption.
The glistening jellies trigger a craving, and you’re hit with the frustration of a nostalgia so brittle it can break up the perceived linear projection of the past. Through our memories we crave alternate endings, and different beginnings - the cravings extend forward and backward, like a tree swing on a summer’s day or a bullet ricocheting or both at the same time.
These reproductions are a means of documenting that which is often perceived to be outside of history and yet is central to everyday life. The objects are accompanied by a pervasive sense of absence, as if picnic spreads have been catalogued, joy is laid out in grids. The tension mounts as they beg not to be disturbed.
As Jana Terblanche aptly puts it, ‘sweets that you cannot eat, lips that you cannot touch... This playful negation of our primary desire for art to be pleasing, provokes where it might placate. It reminds us as viewers that art is not there simply to give us what we want.’.
Portrait Photography by Matthew Pike.
Copyright of the artist, Geena Wilkinson.
B I O G R A P H Y
b. 1994, Cape Town, SA.
Lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.
In 2016, Geena Wilkinson graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Art Degree from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, at the University of Cape Town, RSA. In 2019, Wilkinson returned to UCT as an Andrew W. Mellon Scholar to complete an Honours in Curatorship at the Centre for Curating the Archive, where she graduated with a first class pass and was named a Golden Key International Honour Society. In 2015, she was selected as a top 100 finalist for the Sanlam Portrait Award.
In 2024, she has presented works with Worldart Gallery, at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, in Cape Town, South Africa, including an artwork on their newly launched section Cabinet | Clay, curated by the fair’s director, Laura Vincenti. She is set to present new works with Worldart at RMB Latitudes, later in the year.
