Jared Leite explores cultural identity through printmaking and sculpture. As a recent graduate of the BAFA programme at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, he is currently completing his Master of Arts in Fine Art at the same institution.

Working with a variety of methods he relies on the layering of images, symbols and metaphors as a way of visualizing cultural multiplicity. The works included stem from his graduate exhibition titled Amalgam (2019) and rely on the construction of complex viewpoints through which identity can be reframed and questioned. Jared, through his work, is mostly concerned with the value of culture, notions of authenticity and validity are points of discussion in his work. The combination of modern and traditional processes [engraving, lithograph, digital collage] in producing layers of text and image speak towards the complexity of his perspective but also to the ambiguity that surrounds ‘colouredness’- as something which is performed/held differently throughout South African history.

“The work is an attempt to visualize a convergence of representational issues I felt entangled within; animosity in the shadow of separatism, cultural constructedness, appropriation, feelings of displacement and so forth.”