Click to watch the Cape Mongo trailer
Can you give us a short background on
yourself?
I was born in Cape Town in 1989. My family moved
to Grahamstown in 1993, where I attended school
and later completed my BFA Honours at Rhodes
University. In 2013 I moved back to Cape Town
where I have spent the past two years working
towards my MFA at Michaelis School of Fine Art.
Did you always want to be an artist?
Artist is a term that should be used loosely. I have
always found it difficult to distinguish between
art production and play. Much of what you might
call my ‘artistic practice’ can be traced back to the
games of my childhood; the hours spent constructing
elaborate structures out of toys and sticks, building
bases in the garden, digging through my parent’s
cupboards and playing dress-up, and imaginatively
repurposing found objects to become something
else, have given me an affinity towards the sculptural
and performative.
What artists, African and abroad, have
inspired your work?
Steven Cohen’s work has continually shifted
my understanding of what performance in the
public sphere can be. American artist Nick Cave’s
soundsuits make me look at the world as if through
the eyes of a child. Hip-hop artist MF Doom’s use
of persona, masking and audio montage is the stuff
my dreams are made of. I was lucky enough to be
supervised by one of my heroes, Jane Alexander,
during my MFA. Meeting and working with her was a
hugely enriching experience.
How would you describe the style of your
work?
I spend much of my time skarreling through the
dumps of consumer culture and reassembling
fragments of found images and objects – borrowing
bits from all over to create new juxtapositions.
I use collage as a tool to question notions of
representation and to construct new relationships
(RIGHT) Francois Knoetze collects items for his next work of art.