TEAM
Linde Kriel
Owner, Curator and Co-founder
Linde Kriel is a South African fine artist, printmaker, and curator currently based between Johannesburg and Bloemfontein, where he is completing a Master of Visual Arts degree under Professor Brenda Schmahmann at the SARChI Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture at the University of Johannesburg. His academic research sits at the intersection of practice-led inquiry, queer theory, materiality, and ritual, with a particular focus on water-based artistic practices and the transformative potential of papermaking as a counter-practice to normative systems of purification and belonging. Linde completed a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts with distinctions at the University of the Free State, where he received the Dot Vermeulen Prize for academic excellence. He has been a finalist at the Sasol New Signatures competition four times but on his first time entering in 2022 he received a Merit Award. He was also a recipient of two of the Phatsoane Henney New Breed awards as he was both the Runner-up winner and the first winner of the Digital Category Award in 2023. His exhibition history includes the Pretoria Art Museum, the Oliewenhuis Art Museum, the Turbine Art Fair, and the Google Offices Johannesburg among others. As a conceptual artist, Linde's practice spans multiple mediums including printmaking mediums like linocut, reduction linocut, copper etching, silkscreen, lithography, gel plate monotype, and cyanotype. Their own works are included in this exhibition, made across the years of their undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Alongside their studio practice, Linde maintains an active curatorial and research life. He has presented five research papers at four different conferences and symposiums including at the South African Postgraduate Philosophy Society Symposium, SAVAH and the Artivism Conference. Linde co-founded Makwande with Sebotse Selamulela in 2022, and has since built it into a platform that has received work from student artists across South Africa. Makwande l'Abondance is Linde's largest curatorial project to date.
I adore printmaking for its unique ability to extract my best creations, as the pressure inherent in the process unfailingly brings forth my true artistic essence.
Sebotse Selamulela
Co-founder
Co-founder of Makwande and a practising printmaker whose lithographs, etchings and drypoints appear in the collection.
Printmaking is not just a process of reproduction, for me it is a form of expression. It provides me with a form of creative expression that verbalises more than I can ever say.