SPIER ARTS TRUST COLLECTION

‘Songsmith (The Great Karoo)’ is part of award-winning artist Jenna Burchell’s ongoing project wherein she restores broken objects and sites by embedding into them golden instruments called ‘songsmith’. The resulting sound sculptures and interventions respond to human contact by revealing songs about people, places and events as they fall into, and rise from, the vicissitudes of time. Burchell’s work is about preserving the fragile and ephemeral nature of memory and experience – often by fusing the digital with the natural world to create archives wherein the historical is subverted with narratives from  the periphery.

South African artist Jenna Burchell has exhibited at national and international museums, galleries, and institutions. Her major projects, Homing (2014–2016) and Songsmith (2016–ongoing), are evolving bodies of work spanning multiple years. A permanent outdoor ‘Songsmith’ installation resides at Spier Wine Estate, Stellenbosch.

Burchell was commissioned for a large-scale memorial at the Sarah Baartman Center of Memory (2019–ongoing) and recently completed a community-driven visual redress project at Stellenbosch University (2024). In 2024, Burchell debuted ‘Heartbreak Pots’ at The Wake, the central curated exhibition of the Dak’Art Biennale.