Jenette Unite: Terra: Sands and Detritus Soiled with History

Jeanette Unite, cobalt and copper mine industrial waste in molten glass

Ten years ago I started spending time on mines. My shock response to the 40-year old diamond prospecting pits on the paleaolithic West Coast beach deposits resulted in the first body of work I exhibited, Earthscars: A Visual Mining Exploration (2004). This show has travelled in different forms to site significant cities and galleries in southern Africa. Mining has defined African cultural and socio-political identity and the impact of colonialism and globalisation affects how we occupy our current landscape.

The work expanded from Earthscars to explore rehabilitation plants and environmental relationships. Conversations around visual interpretation of the extractive industry with geologists, engineers, metallurgists and industrialists have further expanded my understanding of mining. I have developed paint, pastel and glass recipes from the advice of earth scientists, geo-chemists, paint-chemists and a ceramicist to develop this ‘eco-alchemic’ work.

Jeanette Unite, Carbon Imprints, gold mine dump waste
containing carbon, graphite, manganese, iron and titanium

Over the past decade visual explorations included journeys to Namaqualand, Simon van der Stel’s copper mine, the first colonial mine from 1685, to harbours and construction sites and visits to active gold, coal, salt, manganese, titanium and platinum mine sites, as well as obsolete and archaeological ones too. I take photographs from these travels and duplicate images from mining museums and archives, the internet, mining journals and libraries. But the most significant treasures I get from mines are the sands and detritus soiled with history.

My palette derives from the jars filled with metalliferous and diamondiferous mine dump sand, dust, overburden and metal oxides. My artworks incorporate industrial waste containing enough metal to yield startling colour when molten in kilns in extreme temperatures. The artist as end user of mining re-establishes the art and science link and reminds us that pre-industrial era artists used pestles and mortar in art production. The abstract chthonic glass panels are constructed from recycled detritus and toxic material like lead, arsenic and cyanide that catalyse the mineral and metal reactions.
My material is both subject and object; abstract landscapes are made from the actual landscape in a ‘beauty-from-waste’ aesthetic. I am currently investigating a way to transform my current research into work around the issues of the “resource curse”, also known as the “paradox of plenty”.
Jeannette Unite is a visual artist based in Cape Town