biography
I am an artist, researcher and curator. I hold a PhD in History of Art (Wits University, 2019) with a special interest in surfacing ‘quieter’ contributions to knowledge production, eclipsed by overarching master narratives. In my capacity as the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Visual Arts Department of the University of Pretoria (2020–2022), I developed the project, Inherited Obsessions (2022), to address shortcomings in post-colonial forms of thinking about heritage and scholarship. I conceptualised the project consisting of an exhibition and award winning peer-reviewed edited publication as a collaboration between the University of Pretoria and the Ditsong National Museum of Cultural History. This project is the product of conversations I facilitated between curators, artists, students, faculty and researchers to challenge presumptive and lasting cultural stereotypes. My research has been published in journals such as de arte and Critical Arts. My creative work has also been included in group exhibitions, most recently the KKNK Virtual Exhibition: ‘If you think about it, just midding in the meantime (or) Progression’ (2021) and Nirox Open Lab II: ‘Good Neighbours’ in 2022.
education
‘Dr de Harde has immersed herself in a lesser known archive of copies of rock paintings produced by the artist-researcher Elizabeth Goodall in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) from the 1930s through 1960s. A practising artist herself, Dr de Harde presents a fine-grained art-historical reading of the evolving methods, fieldwork and creative practices that frame processes of rock art reproduction and serve to structure in hidden ways how the art is interpreted. De Harde's careful excavation of Goodall's archive in Zimbabwe and at the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt elaborates on some of the hidden processes that lie beneath the rock art reproductions that circulate in scholarly and popular contexts. Her study includes a comparative analysis of Goodall's years of research and copying of three prominent rock art sites in Zimbabwe alongside the partially overlapping work of the artist Walter Battiss, and an evaluation of the paradigm-setting and explicitly scientific copying practice of the Harrismith Programme under the direction of the eminent Professor Emeritus David Lewis-Williams. She makes a convincing case for the value of a 'quieter' kind of scholarship achieved by Goodall, operating beneath the dominant narratives of rock art interpretation, and through a sensitive creative engagement with the art on the rocks.’ – supervisors Dr Justine Wintjes & Dr Jill Weintroub (2019)
PhD in History of Art (2019) specialising in southern African Rock Art, archives, and hand-painted reproductions of rock paintings produced by artists.
MA History of Art (2014) specialising in Contemporary South African Art.
BA Honours in Fine Art (2008).
exhibitions
Inherited Obsessions, Ditsong National Museum of Cultural History, co-curated by Laura de Harde & Motsane Gertrude Seabela, 2022
Nirox Open Lab II: ‘Good Neighbours’, 2022
KKNK Virtual Exhibition: ‘If you think about it, just midding in the meantime (or) Progression’ curated by Fadzai Muchemwa, 2021
Touch, Turbine Art Fair (TAF), Johannesburg, South Africa, 2017
Tiny, In Toto Gallery, Birdhaven, 2017
Yiull Damaso Studio Collab, Craighall, 2016
The Other World Exhibition, In Toto Gallery, 2012
Various exhibitions, Art Space, 2011 - 2012
Joburg Fringe, Art of Assemblage, Braamfontein, 2011
Smoking Dragon Women’s Festival, Assemblage Works on Paper, Amphitheatre Backpackers, Drakensberg, 2011
Assemblage 24 Hour Launch, Main Street Life, 2011
Martienssen Prize, University of the Witwatersrand, 2008
Martienssen Prize, University of the Witwatersrand, 2007
achievements
Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Best Creative Collection: Exhibition Catalogue, 2023 https://nihss.ac.za/awards
The Gapp Awards, awarded Gold in the Digital Printing - Hard Cover Books category, 2022
The Claire and Edoardo Villa Will Trust: Artist Production Awards (the Villa Awards), 2022
National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences: Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, 2020-2022
Member of the Golden Key International Honour Society, 2020
Wits School of Arts RINC funding, 2019
Arts and Culture Trust funding, 2018
National Research Foundation bursary for four years doctoral research, 2014-2018
Wits Merit Award, 2015-2017
Stein-Lessing Postgraduate Scholarship, 2012