Silence as a Room (I of V), Remembrance
The Silence as a Room, R-membrance artwork traces the echoes of human presence — how we shape and are shaped by the earth. Through acts of making, unmaking, and remembering, I explore what remains when silence meets history, and when the land itself becomes the storyteller.
We leave traces of ourselves behind — here, there, long ago (say… 10,000–195,000 years ago), and even further back, some 300,000 years.
These traces tell our story — the story of humans (and others) traversing the earth.
What remains, we gather and piece together into a version of history that defines us and shapes our identity.
Beneath the waves, across deserts, through forests, and in the mountains, Homo sapiens have endured, created, destroyed — and created again.
Coral Bijoux (ZA)
Coral Bijoux (b.1965) is a South African interdisciplinary artist whose work investigates the intersections of land, ecology, and Feminine discourse. Based at 4Art Studios, her practice emerges from decades of engagement in arts education, community collaboration, and research-driven creativity.
Bijoux began her professional journey as an educator in the Johannesburg townships, later turning toward arts management and education in urban, peri-urban, and rural contexts across South Africa. These experiences inform a practice deeply rooted in social and ecological awareness, drawing attention to the fragility and politics of land, space, and ownership.
A notable art project Dreams as R-evolution (2019–2022) reimagined a neglected plant nursery at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Westville campus as a living installation of plants, and sculptural forms in industrial discarded plastic—exploring dreams as activism, ecological awareness, and the politics of space. The work was later reinterpreted for the IZIKO South African National Gallery (2021–2022) and extended as a smaller installation, titled, green, in the Ammazulu Sculpture Garden (2022-2023), where industrial polymer, wood, astro-turf, and live grass became some of the recurring motifs in her material vocabulary.
Her current series, Silence as a Room, is a sculptural land art project addressing lesser recognised ecological knowledges, and the politics of access and ownership. Through land as both subject and medium, Bijoux also interrogates extractivism and capitalist interventions that threaten ecological and Feminine balance.
Her practice spans installation, sculpture, drawing, digital graphics, and an emerging interest in documentary film, underpinned by research in philosophy, science, and technology. Each material choice is intentional—material as metaphor—reflecting her belief in visual language as a mode of knowing.
Bijoux has a teacher’s qualification, and holds a BA Honours in Gender Studies (summa cum laude). She has an MA in Arts from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Fine Art at the University of Pretoria, expanding her transdisciplinary inquiry into ecology, materiality, and the Feminine as a creative force.