Location: South Africa
Born in 1991. Marcus Viljoen Lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.
Marcus Viljoen is a conceptualist using various photographic processes and techniques bringing across ideas of memory held and lost with societies perception. He has always been enamored of photography.
By using photography in a sculpture and textured element, Marcus finds new ways of using the medium. The many different Cultural and social trends that surrounds him, inspires his photographic aim.
Most of his works are combinations of mixed media with photography. He explores underlying notions of time and the paradoxical relationship between society and present states of being.
Through the process of altering photographs, he emphasizes our understanding of the abstract terms society and photography through metaphor.
Marcus Viljoen is a conceptual photographer who utilizes various photo-based and mixed media processes to create limited edition prints which explore the rich terrain of social memory and perception through landscape. With admirable precision and flair, Viljoen depicts the five geographic regions of Nambia:
the Central Plateau; the Namib Desert; the Escarpment; the Bushveld; and the Kalahari Desert.
Produced through a complex layering process, each finished work is a composite of upwards of two hundred layered images that as a whole offer realistic landscapes mediated by illusion and distortion. Subliminal nostalgia, notions of the temporal, states of being and the abstract language of photographic metaphor push the work into exciting conceptual territory.
Viljoen’s most recent development involves the use of cutting, altering and weaving collected photographs and imbues the work with the dignity and sincerity of the artist’s hand.
In the past the women were so enchanted with the rhythm of the mans flute that they twist and turn, entwining themselves with each other, adding to the solemnity of there lives. The Kandarpa tale is the outcome of a unique ritual in Orissa, which shows that Kandarpa is in full command of the orchestration of woman that takes place in everyday life. After Independence, India gave equal rights to men and women in all walks of life. But even today one cannot say that all women in India enjoy equal rights with men in all matters. My images are constructed to magnify the contradiction and strength of their journey that the woman had to endure to change the way they are treated.
India, a diverse landscape, crowded with holy, sacred sanctuaries. There are seven sacred rivers, including the Ganges. On its banks is Varanasi, one of seven holy cities, which itself is guarded by 56 shrines to Ganesha, the popular elephant-headed god. The body of Sati, a goddess, is said to be scattered at 108 sites throughout India. The numbers and combinations are endless.
Many of these pilgrimages have been around for centuries. India is more than a map, it’s a three-dimensional sacred landscape, linked by its
story lines.
“Erongo”
“Caprivi”
“Etosha”
“Sesriem”
“Otijworongo”
“Damaraland”
“Partha Sarathi”
“Ananta Subudhi”
“Bhaskar Mohapatra”
“Untitled”
“Ganesh”
