Natalie Paneng

Natalie Paneng (b. 1996) is a contemporary multidisciplinary South African artist. Paneng describes herself as a world-builder and sees her growing practice as a way to navigate, share and archive imagined and alternative realities brought to life through digital artistic process. Paneng uses her self-taught digital skills to investigate the role of the alternative black woman within warping narratives, inviting viewers to explore surreal worlds with her.

Natalie Paneng (b.1996) is a Johannesburg based multidisciplinary artist. Paneng received her BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Witwatersrand in 2018 and was awarded the Leon Gluckman Prize for the best piece of creative work. Paneng draws on her theatre background and self taught digital skills to create multidisciplinary digital art/new media. Paneng describes herself as a world-builder and sees her growing practice as a way to navigate, share and archive imagined and alternative realities brought to life through digital artistic process. Paneng has exhibited with TMRW Gallery, The National Arts Festival , Blank Projects Michaelis School of Fine Art, BKHz, Javett UP and Galerie Eigen Art Leipzig and Mutek. Along with this, she has participated in local artist residencies such as Bubblegum Future 76 Residency (2018), Floating Reverie (2019) and Fak’ugesi Digital Innovation Artist Residency (2019) and The Centre of A Less Good Idea’s So Academy’s ‘Thinking in Cardboard’ scenographers mentorship (2021). She has also published creative research through Ellipses Journal and Artist Research Africa as well as being a 202 Fellow with the Institute of Creative Arts and UCT. Her first solo exhibition ‘Maze’ was presented internationally in Leipzig, Germany, at Galerie EIGEN + ART. In 2022 David Krut Workshop invited multimedia artist Natalie Paneng to collaborate on a series of prints with Sbongiseni Khulu. This collaboration spanned continents over the following months and yielded a vibrant body of work unlike anything else in our archive. This series of unique works was launched at Turbine Art Fair 2023. She returned to the workshop in 2024, leading to her creating a new body of work that was shown in a solo show ‘Uncanny Valley’. Paneng was introduced to our operations after being selected as an artist in residence with the Leipzig International Art Programme (LIA) in association with The Centre for the Less Good Idea, who put out an open call to South African based artists from across all disciplines with a focus in digital media output, to apply for a collaborative print-making residency in Leipzig, Germany. David Krut Projects assisted LIA and the Centre with the selection process in Johannesburg and offered the artists a chance to wet their feet in the printmaking world before embarking on their 3-month residencies overseas. Paneng spent a day at DKW exploring the possibilities of working with a professional print workshop, and the working relationship has grown from there. The prints created during the LIA residencies were exhibited in South Africa in collaboration with David Krut Projects at The Centre for the Less Good Idea Lounge at Arts on Main, just upstairs from our workshop. Her print works are distinguished by their punchy and playful use of pink and bright green. After starting with the monotype process, Paneng expressed interest in linocut for its graphic quality as well as pronto lithography to incorporate her character into her work. The body of work progressed into a series of whimsical scenes set in Paneng’s checkerboard playground, combining the printmaking processes of linocut, pronto lithography and embossing.