JENNY NIJENHUIS

(b. 1969, Johannesburg, South Africa)

Jenny Nijenhuis obtained her BAFA from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1993. Having worked in corporate marketing and running her own communications agency until 2018, she returned to her art practice part-time in 2012 working in sculpture and installation. Years spent in communications combined with an on-going drive to understand human identity and how this is influenced by religious, political, and societal dogma, has led to her current artistic exploration.

Nijenhuis’ practice centres around interconnectedness to demonstrate the binary relationship between violence and vulnerability.

Her 2016 ‘SA’s Dirty Laundry’ installation highlighted South Africa’s rape crisis. Nijenhuis collected and hung 3600 used panties donated by rape survivors on washing line in Johannesburg’s streets. In 2019 she created ‘This is South Africa’ - an enormous SA flag made from this donated underwear. Signalling distress, the flag was flown upside down outside the SA High Commission on Trafalgar Square, UK. In the same year she was invited to present the keynote address at an event on the empowerment of women hosted by Cornell University, New York.

In 2022 Nijenhuis was invited to install ‘Resonance’ onsite in the Women’s prison on Constitution Hill. Consisting of a handmade white dress stitched with red thread, Resonance contemplates the escalation in gender-based violence in South Africa as it intensified during Covid 19 lockdowns.

Nijenhuis is a finalist in the Sasol New Signatures, PPC Imaginarium and the Lovell Tranyr Art Trophy competitions. Nijenhuis has held two solo exhibitions and participated in various group shows in South Africa and the UK.