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Jana Visser (b. 1997) is a textile artist and handweaver originally from Stellenbosch, South Africa, who is captivated by weaving as both an art-making method and its conceptual capabilities. In 2019 she completed her Bachelor studies in Fine Art at Stellenbosch University. In 2021 she obtained a Bachelor’s Diploma in Textile Design from LUCA School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium. In the following year she completed her Master’s in Textile Design also at LUCA School of Arts for which she received a Magna Cum Laude. Her Master's thesis titled, "an emptiness that breathes" was nominated for both a Thesis Prize and a Dirk Lauwaert Award.
Visser’s work has been exhibited in multiple galleries and institutions in both South Africa and Belgium, including the Design Museum in Ghent, and forms part of private collections in South Africa, Belgium, France and Germany. Recent exhibitions include Verweven/Entrelacés at Schönfeld Gallery, Zomer Salon at Kunsthal Ghent, and I try to imagine how your texture felt like at St. Peter’s Church of Ypres.
In October 2022, some of her textile works were on display during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Her work titled “in the almost” was shortlisted for the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize of 2023. In May 2024, Visser had her first solo exhibition titled, Breathing Matter, at Queens Brussels Gallery in Brussels, Belgium. Most recently, she was selected as one of 12 finalists for the ANNA Award of 2024, and has been included in Wanted Magazine’s Young and Vital Artists list for 2024.
Mediating between dualities of presence/absence, fullness/emptiness, active/passive, beginning/ending, as well as internal and external realities, Visser has no intention to juxtapose these notions against each other. Rather, she seeks a logic of reciprocity and becoming through the framework of her weaving practice. Grounding her practice in an openness to uncertainty, she navigates between controlling method and media, whilst considering and surrendering to the delicate relationships between matter, time and space. She views this as a crucial source of meaning-making, and a means to explore the viability of sensory perception and embodied experience. There is a desire to know more about the self, the value of rhythm and gesture, and how thread may serve as a conduit through which to access a dimension beyond the tangible.
Her methods are slow – requiring patience and time in order to grasp both their material and symbolic potency. Weaving is process, but also becomes image, whereby the structural warp or traces of weft threads remain visible. Image and surface become one. Material and process become inseparable. The woven image, however subtle or vague, and its physical matrix develop in tandem. In essence, the canvas is the content. Far more than a means to create textile, weaving is for Visser a vital method of internalising, of gaining knowledge and fundamentally a way to exist - or rather; to become.
"Relying on a desire for subtlety, sensitivity, effort and intricacy; my intention is to create spaces of intimate observation and reflection in which layered meanings reveal themselves."