Sonya
Rademeyer

It is through the mark making of sound and movement that the artist Sonya Rademeyer explores her environment. Capturing the sounds of urban spaces, natural environments and voices she translates these sounds into a new language-of-line, often through automated gestural drawing. These drawings are what she views as ‘sonic sketches’ allowing her to explore culture at large, often using physics as a lens to expand on ideas. Using dressmaker’s pins to create new languages-of-line is a playful way in which physics is assimilated into her artwork. Placing her work at the intersection of art, science and consciousness she primarily seeks to visualize empathy through the vehicles of both sound and movement. Her interest in exploring empathy is a direct result of having been a previous ICU nurse for many years, creating a specific focus area that she identifies as the in-between. Likening the in-between to an imaginary geographical space between self and Other, it is within the boundaries of this space that she visualizes the fragility of empathy. Often her work will explore and comment on social issues that include societal issues at large and the impending global environmental crisis. In many ways, her work becomes a vehicle of sound for the voiceless.Her interest in exploring empathy through sound and movement has been published in Interalia Magazine (UK), an on-line platform at the intersection of art, science and consciousness that encourages debate and critical thinking: https://www.interaliamag.org/interviews/sonya-rademeyer/ A graduate of Willem de Kooning Academie (Netherlands) she has participated in multiple international group shows and has represented South Africa at the 2008 DAK’Art Biennale (Senegal). In 2018 she was selected for three residencies: Tankwa Artscape 2018 (South Africa), OPENLab 2018 (South Africa) and OtherLands.OtherSounds 2018 (Portugal) which was an inter-disciplinary residency between visual artists and musicians.