Venarum Mundi

Faith XLVII

Heron Arts is thrilled to announce Venarum Mundi, solo exhibition by South African artist Faith XLVII. The opening reception is June 28th, 2025 from 6-9pm. It is free and open to the public. The exhibition will be on view until August 2nd, by appointment only.

Through the delicate and labor-intensive process of deconstruction and reassembly, Venarum Mundi invites the viewer into an exploration of the economic and geopolitical systems that structure our world. Using the materiality of discontinued currency, maps, and flags, Faith weaves together complex commentaries on value, borders, and the shifting forces that shape our global reality.

Venarum Mundi will display about 15 tapestries, which will be elegantly suspended throughout Heron Arts, along with some early works that showcase Faith’s process.

Faith is also presenting a site-specific installation titled The Nature of Memory. This large-scale, linen textile piece will be gracefully suspended in the gallery atrium. The immersive work channels the elemental tones of ocean and sky, evoking a primal memory of rain, river, and horizon. The installation also depicts an atmospheric haze that mirrors the natural world, one that resonates with us on a deeply instinctual, almost cellular level.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Venarum Mundi reimagines the boundaries of borders, earth and sea by crafting intricately hand-sewn tapestries that piece apart and reimagine the boundaries between wealth and place. This body of meticulously handmade objects echo the fragile fabric of the world we inhabit, and the inherent tensions in our understanding of migration, and territoriality. These artworks, imbued with both beauty and gravity, question the very materials from which they are made—once seen as true signals of stability, now rendered obsolete.

Installation: The Nature of Memory

Through the ancient practice of indigo dyeing, applied in gradient to expansive folds of calico, and the warm pigments of the madder plant forming a central sun disk, the work becomes a quiet invocation.

Faith draws directly from the earth’s palette—its minerals and plants—not simply to depict nature, but to transmit it, to awaken what the soul already instinctively remembers from natural color. Expansive horizon. Distance. Depth. Height. Dissolution

The installation serves as a focal point in the exhibition’s broader narrative, which contemplates the Earth not as backdrop, but as active presence and participant—an archive of knowledge, a vessel of memory, and a mirror to our internal landscapes.

ARTIST BIO

This is Faith’s inaugural solo exhibition in San Francisco. Additionally, she has an expansive mural on the facade of the University of Hastings Law School titled ‘The Unbound’. Her debut museum exhibition was presented at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, France, in 2023. The artist’s work has been exhibited at prominent institutions such as the Calais Museum of Fine Arts, the Bernard Magrez Foundation in Bordeaux, Mana Contemporary and the Brooklyn Museum in the USA, among others.