JOANNE VOSLOO
Joanne Vosloo (Johannesburg, RSA)
Joanne Vosloo is a multi-purpose designer with a background in fashion moving between conceptual design, process-oriented work, and audiovisual art. Experimenting with narrative form, she comments on the developmental influence of the "on" and "offline" world through garments while capturing the many stories that lifelong objects contain. Her alter ego "Octo Jozer" is a part of the Overgraduates, for which she wrote a fictional mini-chapter with a weekly choice system where other OG members could choose new directions. Her thesis research project, I, Object, ultimately translated into a short fiction novel.
At Het HEM, Vosloo presents a sandbox inhabited by various created objects and baptized "digi-friends". The installation is inspired by the longevity that sand possesses, a collectors item in-game as well the actual presence a player is able to leave behind. An unvarnished translation of the term "sandbox game" (defined as an open world video game where one's avatar can explore, collect and construct), Joannes work is based on recrafting a physical interpretation highlighting counter-experiences. Morphing this logic back into physical exhibition space, Vosloo invites viewers to speculate between physical and virtual systems, and interrogate what happens to work, creativity and object-making in the various stages of digitization.