Hannelie Coetzee

Hannelie Warrington-Coetzee (b. 1971, South Africa) is a Johannesburg-based visual artist and honorary research fellow at the Global Change Institute (University of the Witwatersrand). Her relational practice regularly centres on public spaces, where she produces interventions that ranges from ephemeral to permanent. Originating out of her respect and concern for the environment, Coetzee employs public experiments on nature-based solutions, most often built out of reclaimed industrial waste, to form unlikely partnerships, including with the surrounding land. Research into these materials and the context of their deployment on-site remains a fundamental component of Coetzee’s process, allowing her to orient her work around its immediate community and locate meaning inherent to the materials used, and thus connecting the audience to the intervention. As a transdisciplinarian, Coetzee’s practice seeks to build new creatures marrying environmental science and social action to better encourage empathy for and engagement with nature.