ARTIST STATEMENT - February 2026 Exhibition
Listen | The Sound of Freedom explores listening as an act of courage, empathy, and transformation. In this Origami Butterflies collection, JooJ uses thousands of individually folded butterflies to visualise how freedom is not declared by one voice alone, but formed through many — layered, fragile, and powerful when united.
The butterfly, a recurring symbol in JooJ’s practice, represents change, hope, and the quiet strength of repetition. Each fold is intentional, echoing the idea that freedom is built patiently, moment by moment. When assembled, these delicate forms create dynamic movement, suggesting voices in motion — rising, converging, and resonating beyond the individual.
The Madiba work anchors the collection. Mandela’s legacy was shaped as much by his ability to listen as by his ability to lead. His belief in dialogue, reconciliation, and collective dignity is translated here into a living surface of butterflies — a visual chorus that speaks to unity, resilience, and the enduring power of humanity when heard.
The Silence Before Climax is the collection’s most explicit provocation. It captures the suspended moment just before surrender, when breath is held, bodies pause, and everything is possible. Here, silence becomes erotic, powerful, and destabilising. The butterflies hover on the brink of motion, transforming anticipation itself into spectacle. JooJ suggests that climax is not the point — the tension before it is where truth lives.
The two circular compositions extend this dialogue. The circle, a symbol of continuity and wholeness, reflects freedom as an ongoing conversation rather than a final destination. These works suggest rhythm and return — the idea that listening is cyclical, shared, and essential to collective growth.
Across Listen | The Sound of Freedom, JooJ invites viewers to pause, to listen beyond noise, and to recognise freedom not only as a historical achievement, but as a living, shared responsibility, carried forward through presence, compassion, and connection.
ARTIST STATEMENT - January 2026 Exhibition
This collection exists mid-movement.
Familiar printed images on metal, then painted, interrupted, and reworked.
Fused with Origami Butterflies in an Infinity Loop, the rhythmic section, form in perpetual motion, folding time back on itself.
Transformation doesn’t end, it repeats, mutates, evolves.
Interlaced with a layered South African Flag, thousands of Origami Butterflies function as a story still being written. Built up, fractured, and replayed, it reflects a nation and an identity in flux, complex, unfinished, and alive.
These works hold tension between past and present, structure and improvisation.
The ghosts remain, not as nostalgia, but as echoes that push the composition forward.
There is no final note.
Only continuation.
ARTIST STATEMENT - August 2025 Exhibition
The Cosmos
Derived from the Greek word Kosmos, meaning “order,” the inspiration for this collection comes from the cosmic interplay of chaotic colors and manic energy that ultimately finds harmony and balance. It’s a journey that reflects both the past and the future, weaving them together in unison.
When do you know you’re done?
This question became increasingly relevant over time. In researching Pablo Picasso, I discovered his philosophy: a piece is never truly finished until it finds a new home. He would continue painting, layering more onto the canvas, to the point where some of his works were caked in paint. Inspired by this perspective, the birth of this universe felt much like the Big Bang—an explosion of creativity.
Windmills of the Mind: 7 Deadly Sins
A Capetonian Guinness World Record holding artist that works in a unique medium & loves film, reading & art history. JooJ paints, cuts & folds thousands of Origami Butterflies & gluesthem to perspex to tell his story.
His Windmills of the Mind series further adds depth to his work by manipulating layers of Perspex to enhance the motion of the butterflies in flight.
JooJ chose to take an emotional route to encapsulate the Nine Circles of hell from Dante’s epic poem that
inspired Dan Brown’s book, Inferno, a profound exploration of our Humanity& an allegory for man’s descent into sin.
