(b 1986Germany. Lives and works in Cape Town )
Working across a range of forms and materials (including sculpture, installation and drawing), Carola Friess’ practice draws from her own experience as a surgical nurse to explore the act of repair as a form of care-taking. Central to her work is the processes of assemblage and bricolage, in which, discarded or neglected materials are being ‘taken care of’ in an act of artistic transformation.
In her small-scale works on paper, remnants of materials from her sculptural works are reassembled. Snippets of paper, packaging materials, and textiles are delicately stitched onto paper – suggesting a time-consuming act of repair, while the process of stitching itself adds a violent character to it.
