Downfall

ZITA ORANJE

SCAPE EXHIBITION

ARTIST BIO

Zita Oranje (b. 2001) Is a visual artist and curator based in Pretoria, RSA, and is currently

working towards her MA in Fine Arts at the University of Pretoria. Oranje's material focus is

primarily on traditional modalities of art-making, namely drawing and sculpture, which she

conceptually situates within theatrically staged, and directed installations. Her continued

interest in these mediums is complemented by research into traditional theatrical

iconography and characters, as well as the histories of representation of the expression of

sincerity and authenticity in theatre.

Her work has been shown within several group exhibitions, some of her more recent being,

Turbine Art Fair Paper (2024), The Labyrinth Project's Among Other Things (2024), and

Berman Contemporary’s The New Vanguard: A Moving Perspective (2024), Javett UP

Bridge Gallery (2024), The Viewing Room (2025), the University of Pretoria 2-1 Gallery

(2025), and PULP’s Third Space (2025). In 2024, she was also a finalist within the Sasol

New Signatures Art Competition.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Theatricality is inherent to most interactions, not only through grand gestures or overt

performances but through the smallest exchanges that compose our daily lives. The stage,

in this sense, is not confined to the theatre. It extends into our conversations, our silences,

and the gestures of recognition that pass between us.

In these works, the theatre becomes a kind of landscape, a meeting ground between the

public and the private, the performed and the felt. The empty proscenium, stripped of actors,

lights, and narrative, transforms into an emotional terrain, a still and anticipatory moment

before the encounter. It holds the same tension as a held breath, a quiet space between

presence and absence, expectation and memory.

Opposite this suspended architecture is the terrain of the body. The figures, twisting and

intimate, evoke a bodily landscape that speaks of encounter and communication. Their

gestures suggest proximity and distortion, where affection, exhaustion, and connection fold

into one another.

Together, these images form an interior theatre of relation. They trace how we construct and

inhabit emotional and physical spaces, how we stage ourselves in moments of vulnerability

and joy. This exhibition invites us to navigate these scapes, including theatrescapes,

bodyscapes, and mindscapes, as reflective environments that transform ordinary

interactions into gestures of meaning.

Here, escapism is not avoidance but a way of seeing. It becomes an act of care, a choice to

engage with the texture of presence itself.