Cas Snelgar

The abstract artist Cassie Snelgar was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work is based on a multidisciplinary background in architecture and psychology, as well as a master's degree in art. Cassie Snelgar's latest work explores female sexuality as inherited memory. By combining her personal experiences with the aesthetics of pornographic images from the 1960s, her work seeks to explore what memory is, what is part of an inherited collective unconscious, and what conditioned beliefs are based on the commodification of the feminine form. Influenced by the work of Carl Jung, the artist uses gestural symbols to explore the potential of "archetypes" and the "collective unconscious" as tools to deepen self-understanding beyond "metaphysical truth." I have always been interested in the context in which these porn stars perform: one is a cowboy, the other a naughty nurse. Their creators instinctively draw on childhood memories of the male gaze to deepen erotic power. I enjoy playing with the themes and atmospheres of my work to subvert that same potential, to question what makes one "feel" sexual and how pure or corrupted that impulse is.