Oh stuck streak oh, 2024 (detail)
cane, silk, metallic silk, ribbon,
oil pastel, pigment, found pleated fabric
35 x 135 x 25 cm
Oh through and through oh, 2024
cane, cotton, metallic silk, silk organza,
dye, pigment, casein
65 x 52 x 30 cm
Anxious ornament (european psysche), 2024
mirrors, ribbon, collage, silk, cane
dimensions variable
Narrow chorus I, 2024
silk, cotton band, metallic silk, metal
110 x 70 x 45 cm
Sway Foul at Belmonte, Madrid, 2023
Ww IV, 2023
silk organza, dye, pigment,
oil pastel, cane, cotton band, ribbon
70 x 60 x 52 cm
Sanguine flames, 2022
silk organza, muslin silk, rotin,
plaster gauze, pigment oil pastel
130 x 42 x 15 cm
What of lust/ undiced, 2021
dyed silk, canvas, steel, shell
Three women III. 2021
dyed silk organza, mesh,
steel, oil pastel
Into crime, 2021
dyed silk, canvas, steel
Biography
Born in 1989 in South Africa. Lives and works in Cape Town and Brussels.
Education:
MFA (cum laude) Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam
BFA (cum laude) University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Antonia Brown works across sculpture, writing, and film, exploring the relationship between material, body, and memory through an immersive, process-driven practice. Using silk, cane, dyes, and found elements, she creates delicate, bodily structures that unfold between garment, scaffold, and organic form, challenging distinctions between support and surface, interior and exterior. Her work often draws on historical clothing devices such as corsets or crinolines, reactivating their associations with control and gendered embodiment.
Rooted in familial and collective histories, Brown’s practice engages a feminist critique of voice, presence, and memory. Returning to the pastoral as both material and metaphor, she unsettles its idealized imagery by exposing its entanglement with histories of violence and control. Through distortion and reconfiguration, she embraces inconsistency and misinterpretation as forms of refusal, allowing her works to remain open and shifting in meaning.
SELECTED SOLO & DUO EXHIBITIONS
2026
Solo presentation, Galeria Wschód, Warsaw (upcoming)
2024
Winged Complexion, Union Pacific, London
Heavy Air, NW, Aalst
2023
Tournure, Lucas Hirsch, Dusseldorf
Sway Foul, Belmonte, Madrid
2022
Rama da sasa say so and, (duo with Chloe Royer), Fitzpatrick, Paris
Roaring Shelters (duo with Jacopo Pagin), 10n, Brussels
Pulling forces, seemingly a drip (duo with Matheline Marmy), The Ramp, Cape Town
2021
The Still, Lokal-INT, Biel, Switzerland
Turn to liquid (duo with Machteld Rullens), Pracownia Portretu, Lodz
Silken, 105 Victoria (duo with Jeanne Gaigher), Cape Town
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025
Constellations Warsaw, Galeria Wschód x Brunette Coleman x Petrine, Warsaw
2024
Little tree, Ginny on Frederick, London
The Blue Hour, Union Pacific, London
Vibrant Natures, Castello di Rivoli, Turin
2023
Radical Shapeshifters, Kunsthal Mechelen
The Artificial Silk Girl, Brunette Coleman, London
Postcard Party, CC Strombeek, Brussels
Le voeu du faisan, M.Simons, Amsterdam
Les Anneaux de Saturne, Galerie Derouillon, Paris
2022
Superpostion, Hinterconti, Hamburg
2021
Material Context, Het Archeif, Rotterdam
EMAF, Osnabrück, Germany
Unterkulz/ Understorey, Vienna
2018
Buffer Zones, Platform, Vaasa
Fictitious Legacies, Island, Brussels
2016
Aperto, Fondazione Antonio Ratti
2014
Newwork 14, Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg
Residencies
Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris (2018, 2025)
Almanac, Turin (2023)
Morpho, Antwerp (2023)
Fondazione Ratti, Como (2016)