Jane Rigava
BA visual arts (fine arts)
Stellenbosch University
Graduates: 2025
Specialisms: Fine Art / Contemporary Craft / Textiles - Mixed Media
My location: Windhoek, Namibia
Jane Rigava
First Name: Jane
Last Name: Rigava
University / College: Stellenbosch University
Course / Program: BA visual arts (fine arts)
Graduates: 2025
Specialisms: Fine Art / Contemporary Craft / Textiles - Mixed Media
My Location: Windhoek, Namibia
About
My practice is a wordless dialogue between my anatomical body and the cadaver; an encounter with the post-mortem body as a partner in conversation about mortality, care, and intimacy, conducted through craft.
Where the post-mortem body has long been rendered spectacle, I offer touch instead. Crochet, needle-felting, and fabric manipulation replace the clinical gaze with a crafter's gaze, one that holds rather than inspects. My techniques also echo the logic of medical imaging such as a grid built stitch by stitch and a surface pierced and repaired.My work sits at the meeting point of two lineages: the body measured and modelled by machines, and the body clothed and repaired by cloth. The labour is slow, tactile, and physically demanding. That labour is the point, an embodied exchange between the body I inhabit and the one I re-present.
Ultimately, my work resists full legibility. It asks to be felt more than seen, offering the body a right to remain partially unknown, even as it is touched and held.
If I’m engaging so closely with a cadaver’s data, what record is left on my living anatomy. That question led me to fascia: the connective tissue that records strain and repeated movement in the body. I made woodcut prints of fascia in both healthy and unhealthy states. But a static print could not capture the record of flow. I began looking for a way to introduce movement and dynamism into the prints. That led me to using fabric manipulation techniques such as honeycomb smocking, introducing elasticity to the prints.
Competitions
