Katharien de Villiers graduated in 2015 with an MFA in Installation from KASK, Gent, Belgium, is a young Cape Town-based artist. She participated in group exhibitions in Belgium, such as Vibrations Off at Kristof de Clercq gallery along with Honore d’O and Manfredo Schu.

When you are confronted with an image you do not send out aggressive rays of sight but let the picture work on you. And that’s like experiencing. We must all create our own meaning through experience.

Through tactile manipulations involving the juxtaposition and de-contextualisation of  material, de Villiers calls on the sensorial, mental and physical potential and participation of the viewer when confronted with her work. Thus, depending on the inherent power of the given form and inclination of the beholder to be informed or moved, allowing the voluntary encounter to evolve into a symbiosis of original and inspired reality.

Her first solo, A Bonnet of Gatsbys, was hosted by SMITH gallery, Cape Town in 2017. In 2018 she had two solo shows- one in a basement in Braamfontein, Johannesburg titled Pick Over the Bones, again with SMITH gallery, and another, Trembling Thought, was an independent motion she held in her studio. Both these exhibitions were space-specific installations. Her work can be seen in various group shows around Cape Town and Johannesburg, as well as in the permanent collection of the Nirox sculpture foundation. More recently she has come to explore kinetic, interactive work such as in her work,  Human Carwash at the 2017 CT Art Fair. de Villiers specializes in installation art, exploring and questioning the spatial and relational dynamics of space.

Katharien de Villiers’s work features in the Zeitz MOCAA exhibition,  Still Here Tomorrow To High Five You Yesterday (2019).