ABOUT
Davina de Beer is a South African painter and visual investigator currently living in Seville, Spain. From 2008 - 2021, she was based in Oman where she taught art while continuing her art practice.
My practice is grounded in visual explorations of loss, repair, and materiality. I approach the painting surface not as a seamless, continuous surface, but as an object embedded with visual traces, time and memory. My process often involves cutting my own paintings on canvas or linen into fragments, which I then reassemble and stitch into new compositions. These disruptions and interventions such as cutting, fragmenting, reassembling, and stitching, bring about new and unexpected connections. Some are intentional, others arise intuitively through the process of making and become central to my creative inquiry.
A recurring line of inquiry concerns the parallels between the body and architectural structures, and I use this interplay to reflect on concepts of memory and loss. I draw inspiration from historical ceramic tiles that are found throughout Seville, where I currently live, and use them as point of departure for my visual investigations.
By disrupting and reconstructing these patterns through painting and stitching, I evoke themes of loss, memory, repair, and belonging. Solid threadwork and stitching sit in contrast to thin, transparent glazes, activating the surfaces with differing textures and densities — a search for structure, substance, and a sense of stability or grounding. Through the dialogue between paint and thread, a subtle negotiation unfolds: one element may be obscured while the other comes to the fore, reflecting the idea that loss is both present and partially healed. The thread, in particular, highlights visible sutures of repair, while loose hanging strands acknowledge that what has been lost can never be fully restored.
My paintings remain deliberately unsettled, marked by interrupted rhythms, surfaces in a state of repair, and unfinished forms that seem to wait. This tension between resolution and incompletion invites viewers into an ongoing inquiry, where the acts of making and mending become as meaningful as the final form itself.
CV
Davina de Beer (1982) Johannesburg, South Africa
SOLO PRESENTATIONS
2025 – 26 Unsettled Narratives, Galería Zunino and RealtyArt, Seville, Spain
2025 Meeting Point, Association for Visual Arts, Cape Town, South Africa
2020 – 21 Encoding the Landscape, Gallery Sarah, Muscat, Oman
2010 Echo, Gallery 76, Dubai, UAE
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 The Outsiders Vol. II, Galería Zunino, Seville, Spain
2024 Silo, Momentum Beleggings AARDKLOP Visual Arts Festival, Potchefstroom, South Africa
2024 In The Making: Paint, Resin, and Thread, The Non-Site Art Collective, KZNSA Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa
2024 The Outsiders Vol. I, Galería Zunino, Seville, Spain
2023 The Turbine Art Fair: Non-Site Art Collective Platform, Johannesburg, South Africa
2021 Name, Place, Animal, Thing, Fikra Art Gallery, Muscat, Oman
2020 Spring, Matti Sirvio Art Gallery, Muscat, Oman
2016 Future Forecast, Gallery Noko, Gqeberha, South Africa
2014 100 x 100, Bait Al Zubair, Muscat, Oman
2013 Prophesy (traveling group exhibition), National Arts Festival, Makhanda, South Africa, Two By Two Art Studio, Johannesburg, South Africa
2012 100 Plates, Free State Art Festival, Scaena Theatre, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
2010 Minor Matters, Centenary Art Gallery, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
2008 Reservoir, Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein, South Africa
COMPETITIONS/AWARDS
2024 Arte Aparte XVI Top 40 Art Competition, La Carolina, Spain
2010 & 2008 SASOL New Signatures Competition, Finalists Exhibition, Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa
2010 Ministry of Education Painting Presentation, Bait AL Baranda, Muscat, Oman
*Awarded First Prize in Painting by the Ministry of Education, Muscat, Oman
2008 ABSA L’ATELIER Top 100 Art Competition, ABSA Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
COLLECTIONS
The National Museum of the Boer Republics, Bloemfontein, South Africa
The Directorate of Private and International Education, Muscat, Oman
EDUCATION
2008 M.A. Fine Arts, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
2004 B.A. Fine Arts, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa