FRANLI MEINTJES

(b. 1982 Bloemfontein, South Africa)

Franli Meintjes completed her BA Fine Arts degree in 2004 at the University of the Free State, and has been working as a full-time visual artist since 2012. Meintjes's work placed in the Top 10 of the 2013 and 2014 Absa l'Atelier Art Competition. She has exhibited in numerous Absa group shows: Post-Colonial Africa - KKNK 2014, Re-working the Still - Vryfees Bloemfontein 2014, The Confessional – KKNK & Absa Gallery Johannesburg 2017. Meintjes's artworks were included in three group exhibitions curated by Found Collective, namely: Fix - 012 Central Pretoria CBD 2016, Urban Impressions - Aardklop 2016, Fried Contemporary Gallery 2017 and Snake Eyes 2.0 - Aardklop 2017. 

She also participated in a collaboration with Liberty Battson with their exhibition Inside Out at the KKNK 2017. Furthermore, her artworks made it into the Top 100 of the 2015 and 2017 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition and the 2014 and 2017 Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Award Exhibition. In December 2017, she was invited to take part in the launch exhibition of the National Art Bank at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum. Her artwork was purchased and now forms part of the National Art Bank Collection. This same artwork was included in the exhibition Folds & Faults in August 2021, curated by Carol Brown at the Stegmann Gallery, UFS. 

Meintjes’s first solo exhibition, Possible Impossibilities, took place at Grahamstown National Arts Festival Fringe in 2018. In the same year, she was selected as a finalist in the sculpture category of the 2018 PPC Imaginarium Competition. She collaborated again with Liberty Battson with an artwork for the In Conversation exhibition at Everard Read Cape Town in 2021.

Meintjes is a mixed media artist and her artworks are inspired by her interest in the people of South Africa. A country with people from different cultures and backgrounds, she is particularly interested in how they interact with each other. Her concern lies with the significant increase in the levels of poverty, the palpable racial tension which is evident in our beautiful yet fragile country and the many who are reluctant to cross the bridges of racial, social, cultural and religious divides. 

SELECTED GROUP SHOWS

2022 Things I’d like to remember, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa