Last night we attended the opening of Stipatio, the first solo exhibition, by French Artist Zena at the Alliance Francaise. Zena, aka Nadia Zéphinié, hails from southwest France, but has been living in South Africa for the past 4 years.
We were lucky enough to have Zena personally walk us through the show, providing us with a deeper understanding of the concepts, and the methods used to achieve the end result.
The idea for the works began whilst Zena was on holiday in Madagascar - while shooting an image of a Lemur, at the last minute changed her focal point and achieved what she calls "her first mistake". This image lead to her experimenting with movement, of both the subject and the camera, to achieve the abstract images. Swirls of light and colour that look like a master painter’s brush has been at work. This was elaborated by the paper choice: archival fine-art watercolour paper. "I call the technique Zenagraphique because it marries photography and drawing or painting," she says.
Throughout the walk through Zena elaborated that anyone can achieve what she had done and urged us to try out her methods to achieve the unknown. "Basically, I do everything you are not supposed to do with a camera," she explained to us.
The Exhibition is being held at the Alliance Francaise du Cap until 30 June. Mon – Thurs 9:00-18:00, Fri 9:00-17:00, Sat 9:00-13:00.
Lauren Smit at the Orms ProPhoto Lab printed all the images on Epson Watercolour paper, and photographed the exhibition.