Die stomme aarde is a series of environmentally conscious charcoal drawings in microscopic detail in which Henk Serfontein engages with the green conversation. 

The title of the exhibition, which can be read as “the mute earth” and/or “the wretched earth”, is derived from the homonymous title of a poem by Wilma Stockenström. The poem was published in 1976 in her collection Van vergetelheid en van glans for which she was awarded the Herzog Prize in 1977.  

In her preface to the Stockenström anthology also titled Die stomme aarde, Prof. Ronel Foster writes as follows in the essay, “Tolk van die stomme aard”: “Already in Stockenström’s debut, Vir die bysiende leser (1970), humankind is depicted as a fool, unresponsive to the messages of the universe and unable to decode its secret language. To the self-absorbed human the earth therefore seems impervious and merciless.” 

She continues: “What is offered here and elsewhere in Stockenström’s oeuvre, is an unflinching portrayal of the egocentric human who inhabits an “own small world” and affects the cosmos – untouched by its beauty and splendour.”  

Serfontein’s exhibition is a response to this. The exhibition skirts around the egotism of humans by placing nature at the centre of the work. Just as Stockenström in her poetry becomes an interpreter for the wretched earth, Serfontein wants to be sensitive to the hidden messages in plants, stones and soil.  

In her early eco-minded poetry Stockenström references the prehistory, folklore and primitive myths and carries with her the entire collective subconscious of Africa. Her landscape is the bare-boned veld, and she takes her reader on a journey across the arid Knersvlakte. 

Serfontein’s exhibition opens with a drawing titled "Hemelligaam: Aarde" (Heavenly body: Earth) and concludes with the work, "Hemelliggaam: Maan" (Heavenly body: Moon). Through this, viewers are positioned as stargazers who stand amazed at the splendour of the universe; they are also summoned to a new regard for nature.  

Next, he invites viewers to become trackers in the veld, to discover humanity’s connectedness and proximity to nature through the eye of his meticulous observation.  

A series of six monumental botanical drawings of disrooted plants follows, and includes the volstruisnek, grysbekkie, van balen’s aloe, krimpsiekbos, star flower and green aloe. With their soil mouths these plants will break their primordial silences like the ancestors. The plants, in all their splendour and beauty, are not just scientifically descriptive, but also enter into an intertextual conversation with the title of this year’s visual arts program, Diepe Grond – literally “deep ground”, but alluding to hidden depths and things not always being what they seem. The plant roots, usually hidden under the ground, are revealed and function as ecological symbols that start to explore ideas about plant roots as symbols of connection, connectedness, stability and resilience.  

In the second series of six drawings with the title Klipspraak, lines from the so-called stone poems, “Die stomme aarde", "Almoeder" and "Die klip", are projected onto a rotating stone that comes from Kruidfontein near Leeu-Gamka in the heart of the Karoo. In ecological poetry, it is often nature itself that has the floor. The stone images can be read as epitaph, which communicates a certain sorrow about the state of nature in the context of the climate crisis.  

In the destruction of charcoal, ash and soot, Serfontein finds renewal in the typographical landscape when (as in Stockenström’s “Almoeder” poem) the tender green stalks of summer grass are pushed up from the scorched earth. The suggestion is of the cyclicality of nature where destruction, hope and renewal are interdependent. In the Klipspraak series, Die stomme aarde breaks the silence imaginatively, as if stones could talk. Here, stones become the interpreters that communicate the spirit of the earth to those prepared to receive it.  

With this exhibition Serfontein invites viewers not only to come closer but also to stand back, so that like stargazers they will gain a sense of the mystical contained in the universe. A primordial image-world filled with plants, stones, and words is brought into play to articulate something meaningful about humanity and its place in the universe.