Lyndi Sales is a South African artist who explores themes of perception and vision as well as connectivity. She strives to create in the audience a corporeal response – a feeling of being in one’s own body, to “bring people to their senses”.
In her current work, Sales is invested in driving into the present, seeing it as a mysterious, elusive and mutable idea. Inhabiting the present seems to be so curiously difficult, she says, and yet somehow also regenerative, transformative and rewarding.
Her current body of work titled, Moth To A Flame evokes a kite. This work is a metaphor of the flight and the journey – the Bardo*: In Buddhist theories a word that describes the period during which the soul travels for the 49 days following death before reincarnating in another form. This work is closely linked to Sales’ research on near death experiences, those attempts to apprehend and transcends death in various ways i.e. by meditation or the use of drugs. Moth To A Flame takes inspiration from the idea of a light at the end of the tunnel that is mentioned in the testimony of people who have had this kind of experience.
*Bardo: *This piece is a derivative of two works I made a few years back (titled Inbound and Outbound), which was inspired by the Buddhist theory known as Bardo. This theory is believed to be a time period that a soul travels through after death. (“Intermediate state”—also translated as “transitional state” or “in-between state” or “liminal state”)
Sales was selected as one of the representing South African artists at the Venice Biennale in 2011. She has held solo shows internationally at Galerie Maria Lund in Paris and Toomey Tourell in San Francisco. In South Africa she has exhibited at the Goodman Gallery, Bell-Roberts Contemporary, Joao Ferreria and Gallery Momo galleries.
Sales received both her BFA (1995) and MFA (2000) from University of Cape Town, both with distinction. Sales was a merit award winner in the ABSA Atelier, a recipient of the Vermont Studio Centre grant and participated in residencies at the Vermont studio center as well as the Frans Masereel Center in Belgium.
