Alexa Pienaar is a South African artist who completed her master’s in Fine Art at the University of Johannesburg. She was born in Pretoria, grew up on a small farm in the Western Cape, and now finds herself back in the bustling streets of Johannesburg. She is largely intrigued with landscapes, particularly the open fields of grass and farmlands of her hometown and her journey to and from Johannesburg.

Pienaar’s most recent works incorporate familiar landscape imagery and sculptural objects, which are then incorporated into larger installations, and focus on the embodied, the experiential and the psychological effects of her environments. She largely draws on contemporary South African landscape elements as visual metaphors of her lived experiences, as she believes that they have forged her identity. She does this while aiming to determine her place in a contemporary South African society, as well as her sense of being/belonging in it.