South African artist Faith47 opened her first solo show in New York,Agua Regalia – Chapter Two, on 19 November 2015. The work explores the dichotomy between the sacred and the mundane, surrounding the viewer with figurative paintings of celestial beings and everyday objects in artworks that resemble shrines.
The exhibition continues from Faith47’s successful 2014 London exhibition by the same name, but chapter one. The name is taken from the alchemical name (“aqua regalia”, which translates to “royal water”) for the substance that has the power to corrode and dissolve the most unreactive of metals: gold.
Faith47 sees a symbol in this transformative chemistry for her own artistic process, which restores value where it has been forgotten or lost. Mainstream media channels are referring to Faith47 as the female answer to Banksy, and the Huffington Post notes that her work “brings spirituality and nature to the foreground of urban environments.
Unlike the mysterious Banksy, we’ve had the pleasure of welcoming Faith47 to the stage of the Design Indaba Conference to talk about her work. Watch the full video of her talk.
The exhibition Agua Regalia – Chapter Two is at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery until 19 December 2015.
