Natalie Paneng: Uncanny Valley

Natalie Paneng

Uncanny Valley

The dream about the time I was in a meadow of pink and green foliage and flowers. I was wearing that chessboard dress again and in the sky was a huge flower made of more versions of me and my dress. It was big enough to be a cloud or a spaceship. I held my hand in this position again, holding a single hand-drawn flower. I must have picked it from another meadow, in another dream.

76.5 x 55.7 cm

Mixed media (Linocut, Paper lithography, Chine collage)

R 14 725 Incl VAT Framed

I never knew that the POV within a dream reveals more about the dream itself. In fact, I never realised that I was always seeing the scene and never myself within the landscapes. If I ever see myself in a dream, from the POV of me seeing me, I know the version of me I see is not the current version of me. It’s not just about me being there, it’s about what I am doing there and why.

76 x 53.5 cm

Mixed media (Monotype, Paper lithography, Chine collage)

R 10 925 Incl VAT Unframed

She is awkward, complex, and has a quirk to her expression. Residing and working in Johannesburg, South Africa and the cyber village called the Internet. Natalie Paneng is a new media artist using installation and digital magic to birth new worlds and surrealist narratives in which she performs. Natalie Paneng (b.1996) received her BA Honours in Dramatic Arts from the University of Witwatersrand in 2018 and was awarded the Humanities Leon Gluckman Prize for the best piece of creative work, she recently got awarded A Special Jury Prize for Creative Technology at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam in 2023.

Paneng makes use of both her self-taught digital skills and theatre background to create multidisciplinary digital art/new media art. Through her work, Paneng investigates the role of the alternative black woman within warping narratives, using herself as a medium to prompt others to explore their own internal surrealist worlds.

Through her work, she normalises this plane of existence while offering the viewer the chance to enter into her dreams, her thoughts and her digital mind- describing herself as a worldbuilder, Paneng sees her growing practice as a way to navigate and share these realities through digital artistic process.

I have spent a lifetime on TikTok.

40 x 38 cm

Mixed media (Linocut, Monotype, Pronto lithography, Collage)

R 11 160 Incl VAT Framed

Holding onto my inflated head II

49.5 x 35.7 cm

Monoprint (Monotype, Pronto lithography, Collage, Blind embossing)

R 11 000 Incl VAT Framed

Holding onto my inflated head III

49.5 x 35.7 cm

Monoprint (Monotype, Pronto lithography, Collage, Blind embossing, Glitter glue)

R 11 000 Incl VAT Framed

The World Is Your Castle

52.5 x 76 cm

Mixed media (Linocut, Paper lithography, Chine collage)

Edition of 7

R 8 280 Incl VAT Unframed

R 11 380 Incl VAT Framed

The dream about this abstract space that was both indoors and outdoors. My outfit matched the floor again. I was holding onto two balloons, shaped like my head. I couldn’t see the string but could feel it, I could also feel the force of the balloons but somehow I was rooted on the ground and didn’t float off into the abyss.

74.6 x 51.5 cm

Mixed media (Linocut, Paper lithography, Chine collage)

R 10 925 Incl VAT Unframed

The dream about the time I held a balloon shaped like my head in a sea of heads shaped like mine. It was completely silent, like an internet backroom, of sorts.

76.5 x 55.7 cm

Mixed media (Pronto lithography, Collage, Blind embossing)

R 10 925 Incl VAT Unframed

Some of these dreams feel like obstacle courses, the decisions you make to save yourself or move further within the dream feel predestined and all you can do is observe and be moved like a pawn on a chess board.

45.3 x 54 cm

Mixed Media (Monotype, Pronto lithography, Collage, Blind embossing)

R 12 425 Incl VAT Framed