Naomi van Niekerk
area: Applied Art & Animation
Key Facts
nationality
South Africaarea
Applied Art & Animationresidence
Lille, Francerecommending institution
ASIFA Austriatime period
August 2024 - August 2024Naomi van Niekerk is a visual artist, filmmaker and theatre director. Her filmography includes a series of short films based on sensitive interpretations of South African poems that move her personally. Niekerk's films have been shown all over the world and have received international acclaim. As a visual artist, her work includes graphic design and drawing on paper with charcoal. She currently lives in Lille, France.
Filmography:
2014 - 'n Gewone Blou Maandagoggend (An Ordinary Blue Monday) - 03:14 animation, 2015 - By alle skone dinge (To all beautiful things) - 03:01 animation, 2017 - My mamma is bossies (My mum is crazy)- 03:23 - animation, 2023 - Box Cutters - 08:24 - animation
During her residency at MQ, Naomi van Niekerk wants to develop a new film in the form of an exhibition that includes drawings on paper and a small projection of animation experiments under the camera. She is experimenting with different media, such as charcoal drawing, cyanotype and scratch-on-35mm film, as with her current animated short film. This is about a little girl who sees her mother cry every time she celebrates her birthday. When her mother was fifteen years old, her life was shattered when her father was hunted down and shot by the South African security police for reasons that remain a mystery to this day. This event feeds the child's imagination as she reconstructs the story of her grandfather's murder again and again in the form of scenes, as if it were part of a film.