Biography
Born in 1985, Ronél de Jager is a South African visual artist and independent curator and art project manager based in Johannesburg.
De Jager studied BTech Fine Art at the Tshwane University of Technology, where she obtained distinctions in Painting and Printmaking in her final year. She has been a regular finalist in national art competitions such as Sasol New Signatures (in 2007, 2008 and 2010), Absa L’Atelier Art Awards (in 2008 and 2013, and Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Awards (in 2006 to 2011) and has participated in curated group exhibitions at South Africa's major art festivals, including Grahamstown National Arts Festival, KKNK and Aardklop. Her work has also been shown in important university galleries (University of Johannesburg, UNISA and Tshwane University of Technology), corporate galleries (Telkom, Sasol and ABSA), project spaces (ROOM Gallery & Projects, Gordart Gallery project room) as well as commercial galleries (Lizamore & Associates Gallery, Lovell Gallery).
From 2007 to 2013, in addition to pursuing her career as a visual artist, De Jager acted as Gallery Manager and Assistant Curator at Artspace Gallery (now Lizamore & Associates) in Johannesburg. In 2012, De Jager made her début as curator with New Voices and was invited back as an independent curator for the New Voices II exhibition the following year. During 2013, De Jager assisted contemporary artist Usha Seejarim with various projects including the implementation and development of the Art of Access webinar series, community projects with children from the St James Preparatory School in Johannesburg, and more significantly, assisted with the creation and development of the Official Portrait for the late President Nelson Mandela’s funeral in Qunu in December 2013.
The past five years have seen a dramatic increase in interest in her work and she is represented in the art collections of Sasol, Telkom, Spier, Rand Merchant Bank, South African National Library, Nando’s UK and Malaysia, with various works in private collections nationally and internationally.
De Jager's work traverses the mediums of painting, video, photography and multi-media art. Her recent début solo exhibition A.M. After Midnight was a multi-media, multi-spatial exhibition which unfolded in three parts in a series of diverse spaces with the first A Prelude hosted by ROOM Gallery & Projects in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. The second instalment of the exhibition, An Interlude, was one of the featured installations at the 2014 Turbine Art Fair. With both these exhibitions culminating in the third and final part (hosted by Lizamore & Associates gallery, Johannesburg). As each new element of the project is unveiled, previous incarnations exist in memory. Across this evolving body of work, the recording and capturing of light acts as a register of moments of silence, movement, flux, transition and metamorphosis. By exploring the transient qualities of Time, Space and Memory, de Jager continues her exploration of the fleeting and ephemeral nature of the transcendental.
De Jager describes her works as evolving from traces of light which become fragments of a greater whole – chance encounters that either resonate and linger, or are seen and forgotten. Her recent body of work is dedicated to her brother Marius who passed away in August 2013 and to the many fleeting moments of our existence.
