Charlayn von Solms’ areas of research include sculptural assemblage, iconographic de-familiarization/cognitive estrangement, and the compositional methodologies underlying Homeric and Hesiodic poetics – specifically, commonalities between assemblage and oral-poetic composition, metaphors and visual punning, and the catalogue format as rhetorical tool.
Her sculptural practice functions as visual exploration and articulation of the overlooked strangeness of seemingly familiar art-forms from antiquity (such as Homeric and Hesiodic poetry) within a contemporary context. Her current project, The Lost Consonants, imagines the nine Muses from Hesiod's Theogony, not as a chorus of young women, but as elements within a functional system, essentially devising a non-anthropomorphic iconography that encourages an exploration and re-articulation of the metaphorical function and status of the Hesiodic Muses.
Her aim is to enable contemporary audiences to experience the complex, unfamiliar, and often destabilizing artistry of ancient oral poetics that is lost when textual translations must prioritize content over form. Her engagement with antiquity is fueled as much by an admiration for the creativity, intellectual curiosity, and theoretical innovations in the study of ancient oral- formulaic poetics, as the material itself. The apparent simplicity, humour, and references to popular material cultures that characterize her work often hide subtle puns and allusions, intended purely for discovery by, and the amusement of specialists in Greek antiquity.
She lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa, trained at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, and earned a Masters and a PhD in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town, and an MPhil in Ancient Cultures from the University of Stellenbosch. She has lectured at the Universities of Cape Town, Free State, and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Publications include A Homeric Catalogue of Shapes: The Iliad and Odyssey Seen Differently (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). Her artwork is represented in public and private collections.
