During a 2021 field trip to South Africa’s Kruger National Park as part of her masters studies in science, South African artist and activist Hannelie Coetzee threw a few drawing materials into her bag. She had always created among and from nature—often at ginormous scales for her public installations—but never had she sketched in the wild before. With the windows of her car down, mere feet away from hyenas, wildebeest, and warthogs, she trained her ink to mimic the flow of the mammals’ wily movements. Sometimes should would shake or tilt the papers to mirror their patterns. Sometimes she thanked the wind for a well-timed gust to splash the ink with its natural velocity.
“That’s when the spontaneity started developing,” Coetzee tells City Paper. “It’s a full collaboration with nature.”
When she ran out of ink, which she laughs about now, she dipped her brush into her thermos, immediately falling in love with how the dusty-rose hues of the tea (or sometimes coffee) matched the coats of the mammals she sketched. The infusion of the “domestic,” as she refers to it, intrigued her.
“The funny thing was in Kruger Park, I’d be super focused on the drawing and trying to figure it out,” she says. “Then the freakin’ safari vehicles would stop, between me and the animals, and look at me drawing—and not even look at the hyenas!”
The resulting exhibit from her time at Kruger Park, In mid-loping gait on view through Dec. 19 at Morton Fine Art, showcases Coetzee’s animated sketches, often on reused industrial papers, of same-sex creatures (and a few birds and insects for good measure) engaging in queer behaviors. Giraffes, zebras, penguins, ostriches, baboons (oh my), and more can be seen necking, bowing, bounding, shaking, kissing, mating, and frolicking in perfectly harmonious, “natural,” loving unison. Her personal studies in nature, in addition to eco-queer theory—the study of ecology from a nonbinary, non-human-centered approach—inform the collection. Coetzee has found inspiration from one 1999 text in particular, Biological Exuberance, which scientifically documents homosexual lifestyles of more than 300 animals.
“Every time I opened that book, it was just phenomenal,” Coetzee says. “I turned 52 this year, and I’ve always been queer. But I’ve never felt so welcome in the world.”
In mid-loping gait is a pivotal collection for Coetzee. It’s her first solo exhibit in the U.S., a country she has yet to visit, but would like to—sketchbook in hand. Amy Morton, curator of the exhibit and founder of the gallery, first discovered Coetzee’s work by accident during a trip to South Africa more than 10 years ago. Morton has been dreaming of bringing Coetzee’s work to American audiences ever since. Usually Coetzee works in large, “site-responsive” installments with an emphasis on community engagement and activism. A recent example is her 16-foot salvaged marble and steel sculpture featuring two giraffes “necking,” which showcases a combination of sustainable, earth-conscious art that also challenges binary, heterosexual records of science and nature. She designed the piece to enliven a collective of artist studios in Johannesburg. When Morton heard Coetzee had begun translating her works into drawings, which made for much easier—and less risky—transport to D.C., she began plans with Coetzee to finally show her work stateside.
The reception by Washingtonians has been positive, with such a demand for Coetzee’s fierce yet delicate tea-stained animal drawings that Morton asked Coetzee to send more her way to buoy the landmark show.
“This body of work not only brings me much closer to the natural world, but also creates an opportunity for me to bring another lens to fight homophobia,” Coetzee says. “It gives me goosebumps to think there are people who want to buy art, because we don’t have that culture [in South Africa].”
Coetzee uses the Afrikaans word “samesyn” to describe her current momentum—indicataing a kind of “togetherness,” where aspects of life come together and interweave, like the communion of ecology and queer studies, or the marriage of wind and rooibos on sketch paper.
“That’s why it’s such a celebration,” Coetzee says.
Hannelie Coetzee’s In mid-loping gait is on view through Dec. 19 at Morton Fine Arts. mortonfineart.com.