The artist Bronwyn Katz and I are having lunch about 20m from Aristotle’s Lyceum. If you squint through the blooming Jacarandas (I know — crazy) you can see the ruins.
We are sitting in a courtyard at the Athens Odeon during a break in the Rolex Arts Festival, which is celebrating 20 years of the Rolex mentor and protégé arts initiative. It’s a glorious spring day and in terms of location, I don’t think we could be anywhere more apt.
This is after all one of the birthplaces of this kind of mentoring programme. Artistotle was mentored by Plato, who was mentored by Socrates. The idea of the programme is to transmit knowledge that inspires a younger generation, who in turn inspire the mentor. In this place, it feels as if this concept of knowledge is like an ancient tapestry — a continuous thread running across time.
With this programme, which pairs an older mentor with a younger protégé, Rolex has run its own golden thread through art, architecture, theatre, dance, music and literature for the past 20 years.
Katz is part of the current cohort and is being mentored by art-world heavyweight El Anatsui, a sculptor from Ghana, for two years.
Over Greek salads, tabbouleh, dips and other Mediterranean delicacies, she tells me she is going to hang out with him for his opening in October at the Turbine Hall at the Tate in London.
Bronwyn’s career was already hitting the kind of confident global stride many artists can only dream of before this latest accolade. She is having what they call a moment, which is why her plan to dedicate a good portion of this year to her hometown, Kimberley, is an interesting one. She could simply become a global citizen but her practice is drawing her in a different direction.
Bronwyn’s fascination with art ran in tandem with her other interests such as mathematics. “But making stuff felt like something that was beautiful for myself.”
Then I start using stones from the ocean, and then I start paying attention to my skin and then I start creating constellations with the points on my skin. It’s very intuitive
— Bronwyn Katz
Of her process, she says: “Sometimes I think I know what I want to do and then it becomes something else. So, more and more, I don’t try and figure it out. My work is very material-based so I get a lot of information from my materials. Sometimes I spend a lot of time by the ocean and then I start using stones from the ocean, and then I start paying attention to my skin and then I start creating constellations with the points on my skin. It’s very intuitive.”
I wonder what art means to her.
“It’s many things. It’s a friend. It’s also like me connecting with myself, trying to understand what I am feeling, trying to understand how I’m connected to other things. The recent body of work is also like a ritual linked to spiritual practice, like my studio to me is like my church and I have a ritual with the space.”
Katz, 30, was 18 when she moved to Cape Town from Kimberley. She also spent a few years in Johannesburg.
“I think going back to Kimberley is tied up with so many things. In the community I grew up in, people really valued having gardens. The area that I am from is in close proximity to a diamond mine so it was very hot and almost impossible to grow things, and there was a real sense of pride when somebody had a garden because they were able to make the land work. And it is in complete contrast with the earth because it is really wounded,” she says.
“I find that connection to the earth inspiring. My grandfather comes from the Korana people who have always been there,” she says.
“A lot of the work we make as artists leaves the country. Some of it stays but the market isn’t like the European and American market, so I feel a lot of what makes me want to move to Kimberley for part of the year is to work there in a very specific way, not to sell work, but be engaged and share the work with my community,” she says.
“It makes it feel more meaningful and more honest because they are my community, and it is important for me that my community experiences my work beyond liking a picture on Instagram or the internet. They are also part of the process. And the process is the most important part of the work.”
She concludes: “I think that the importance of all the art is the sharing with each other. So I’m excited about that. But also the reciprocity with the environment, so if I take the rocks from the ocean for my work, I return something to it too.”
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