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Natalie Paneng (b.1996) received her BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Witwatersrand in 2018 and was awarded the Leon Gluckman Prize for the best piece of creative work. She lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. Natalie makes use of both her self-taught digital skills and theatre background to create multidisciplinary digital art/new media.
Paneng’s work has been exhibited with TMRW Gallery, The National Arts Festival, Blank Projects, Michaelis School of Fine Art, BKHz Gallery, Javett Art UP and Galerie Eigen Art Leipzig, Standard Bank Gallery and Mutek Festival. Along with this, she has participated in local artist residencies such as Bubblegumclub Future 76 Residency(2018), Floating Reverie(2019) and Fak&#8217;ugesi Digital Innovation Artist Residency (2019) and The Centre of A Less Good Idea&#8217;s So Academy&#8217;s &#8216;Thinking in Cardboard&#8217; scenographers mentorship (2021)
Through her work she explores what it means to have an online presence, the persona’s we develop online and how the Internet and its algorithms control and influence us and our perceived reality. Her video work and art become a way for her to interrogate as well as share how she manifests and navigates the world she lives in and creates for herself. The internet is MTV and she welcomes you to her crib.
Paneng describes herself as a world-builder and see&#8217;s her growing practice as a way to navigate, share and archive imagined and alternative realities brought to life through a digital artistic process.

Natalie Paneng

Ophelia Does Backstroke is an immersive installation which looks at a glitched and recontextualized version of the many iterations of Ophelia fromShakespeare&#8217;s Hamlet. The most popular iteration of this image is where Ophelia is lifeless in a river surrounded by a lush environment, painted by Sir John Everett Millais. This iteration became a prompt for this speculative thinking behind the glitched version presented here in Paneng&#8217;s digital secret garden.
The glitch here transcends timelines and contexts. Ophelia Does Backstroke aims to be a recharged version of the image. We find a black Ophelia swimming in her pool surrounded by a mystical and magical environment filled with fairies, playing and existing in the open environment while another version of Ophelia poses with a bouquet of purple roses next to her pink unicorn. The piece speaks to reigniting new life into former contexts, key stories in our histories and set archetypes.
The immersive installation is a multi-media presentation which makes use of sound, projection and world building installation. The sounds of birds,water and wind chimes all play at the same frequency, imitating Ophelia&#8217;s inner peace and essence. The sound also acts as a teleportation tool for anyone visiting thedigital secret garden.
The piece aims to inspire and bring(glitch) blackwomen into Western stories, ensuring that their position in the context of the story is nothing less than magical and playful. It is an attempt to recontextualize past representations given to blackwomen in previous histories through playful and lighthearted speculation and visual response.
Using technology, Internet pop culture and aesthetics aswell as and stock imagery &#8211; the piece is a playful in its composition and commentary on howart and timelines collidewithin Paneng&#8217;s artistic practice.

Ophelia does Backstroke

Ecole Sainte-Marie

Natalie Paneng – Ophelia does Backstroke

Orange presents &#8220;Eternelle Notre-Dame&#8221;, the first immersive virtual reality expedition to Notre-Dame de Paris. Relive the history of the cathedral thanks to virtual reality, discover inaccessible places and enter history&#8230;. Thanks to virtual reality, you will be able to explore Notre-Dame de Paris through the centuries, completely recreated digitally and thus experience a real emotional journey to discover the secrets of the monument, while (re)discovering the historical events and characters who have marked its history.

Eternelle Notre-Dame

La Nef

Orange – Eternelle Notre-Dame

The ephemeral nature of kinetic sculpture seems an appropriate place for my ideas, emotions, and hopes. A space in which I can focus on ways to blur the boundaries between cinematography and sculpture. Combining computational devices with mechanical elements, I create mandala-influenced sculptures, but divergent from a traditional sculptor, I consider these kinetic sculptures solely a medium! Only a necessary first step in a process to achieve what I believe is the true-focal point of my work. That being the transitory animations, choreographies, and sounds while the sculptures are in motion.

Inspired by The Industrial Revolution and the subsequent changes in human development. A process that led and will lead humanity to both heaven and hell. I aspired to try to capture the paradox of this duality by making an intimidating/brutalist machine. &#8220;Vicious Circle&#8221; is a manifestation of a machine-like society militaristic in fashion. With its relentless drive for conformity, this machine acts out its role. Oblivious and undaunted by either its own destruction or the destruction around it. Maybe, it dances to the beat of progress. Or does it dance to a different tune? With outstretched arms beckoning the observer for redemption! Yearning, someone will notice the beauty contained within its motions, the rise and fall of the hands as they form swarms that flock together like birds in a choreographed dance, a possible virtuous circle.

Orange – Eternelle Notre-Dame

KIKK in townEternelle Notre-Dame

Keep explOrinG

Peter William Holden – Vicious Circle

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Natalie Paneng – Ophelia does Backstroke