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Michaela Younge was born in Cape Town in 1993. She graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2015. Michaela received distinctions in both her theoretical and practical studies. She currently works from her Cape Town base, where she creates wool tableaux that she sometimes combines with other textural materials. Through her process of felting, Michaela works in quite a repetitive manner, matting the wool together.
The subjects in her work shift from experiences to dreamlike narrative that unfold on multiple planes. Although there is an aspect of narrative that comes through in Michaela’s work, this originates more from the way in which she sees things, rather than a deep-rooted nostalgia for story time as a child. Instead, story-telling becomes a way of making sense of the world we inhabit, and it comes through in how our dreams communicate ideas and feelings to us. Dreams have the ability to bypass ‘norms’ of reality, and often have elements of the absurd – for example, the idea that pasta on the floor of the house could stop lava from burning it down. Michaela is particularly interested in the involvement of anthropomorphic figures within the narratives of mythology and children’s stories. Her interest in the anthropomorphic relates to our underlying psychology, where we often enact societal norms, bypassing instinctual desire and childlike play.
Michaela creates tableaux in wool and embroidery, which come from her interest in depicting sculptural forms and vivid graphic scenes. The materiality of the woollen fibres merges the flat, colourful planes of print-making with the more sculptural, textural elements created by the process of felting.
Solo exhibition
Upcoming, April 2018, SMITH
Group exhibitions
2017
Salad, SMITH, Cape Town
Folly, SMITH, Cape Town
Out of Nowhere, SMITH, Cape Town
Nano 2, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town
Bad Habitus, presented by Jnr, Mullers Gallery, Capw Town
Animals, IS Art at Tokara, Cape Town
Art Fairs
2018
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, SMITH
2017
Art Africa Fair
Media and Publications
Nataal
von Geusau, K. (2017). ThREe’S COMpANy. [online] nataal.com. Available at: http:// nataal.com/threes-company/ [Accessed 10 Mar. 2017].
Adjective
Partridge, M. (2017). Something from Nothing – Matthew Partridge. [online] adjective. Available at: http://www.adjective.online/2017/05/16/something-from-nothing-matthew- partridge/ [Accessed 16 May 2017].
Art Africa. (2017). Out of Nowhere - A Group Exhibition - Art Africa. [online] Available at: http://artafricamagazine.org/out-of-nowhere-a-group-exhibition/ [Accessed 14 Jun. 2017].
Its Nice That
Stone, B. (2017). Artist Michaela Younge’s NSFW felt tableaux. [online] It’s Nice That. Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/artist-michaela-younges-nsfw-felt- tableaux-200617 [Accessed 20 Jun. 2017].
The Lake
Flint, J. (2017). Phantom Bride. The Lake, (18), pp.44 – 49.