TEN-SION · Oude Leeskamer Gallery, Stellenbosch · August–September 2022
TEN-SION
Ten art jewellers. One word that says it all. A 2022 group show at Stellenbosch's Oude Leeskamer Gallery placed Lara's work inside a bigger conversation — about identity, discipline, and the spaces we contest.
Some exhibitions are about beautiful objects. This one was about difficult questions — and it said so in its title.
TEN-SION gathered ten art jewellers under one roof at the historic Oude Leeskamer Gallery in Stellenbosch: Lara among them, alongside six fellow postgraduate artists and three lecturers from Stellenbosch University. Ten makers — and the tension between them. The pun was the point.
The work circled a set of real frictions: between socio-political and cultural identities, between creative disciplines, and around the negotiation of contested spaces — the physical, cultural and personal territories we're all constantly claiming, sharing and defending.
For Lara, it was a chance to bring the language of art jewellery into that wider dialogue — to let a wearable object carry the same weight as a painting or a sculpture.
Exhibitions like this one shaped the maker behind VON ARA: an artist trained to think before she makes, and to let meaning lead the way.
“Here, jewellery wasn't decoration. It was a way of asking questions.”