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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
2018 Close Encounters, SMITH, Cape Town
2017 Salad, SMITH, Cape Town
2017 Folly, SMITH, Cape Town
2017 Out of Nowhere, SMITH, Cape Town
2017 Nano 2, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town
2017 Bad Habitus, presented by Jnr, Mullers Gallery, Capw Town
2017 Animals, IS Art at Tokara, Cape Town
Art Fairs
2018 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, SMITH
2017 Art Africa Fair
Media and Publications
http://nataal.com/threes-company/
http://www.adjective.online/2017/05/16/something-from-nothing-matthew-pa...
http://artafricamagazine.org/out-of-nowhere-a-group-exhibition/
https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/artist-michaela-younges-nsfw-felt-t...
The Lake, Flint, J. (2017). Phantom Bride. The Lake, (18), pp.44 – 49.