Jacques van der Merwe

An object resembling a brain-shaped candle placed on a textured, plush fabric with tassels, set against a black background.

Votive objects and cadaver drawings

Matter is memory

A wax brain candle rests on a textile that evokes human skin, tufted with hair. This tableau draws on the tradition of vanitas still life, which assembles symbolic objects to remind viewers of mortality and the fragility of worldly goods. The wax cast also recalls votive offerings. From antiquity through the early modern period, wax was commonly used to create ex-votos, small or life-size replicas of body parts placed in sanctuaries as acts of devotion. With its capacity for realism and its ability to incorporate organic matter such as hair, wax was uniquely suited to these devotional forms.

Ex-votos occupy a paradoxical place. They are often simple and formulaic, yet they carry profound psychic weight. Historically they were shaped by misfortune and healing: crutches, prostheses, or fragments of afflicted bodies transformed into offerings. Such objects hover between instrument and organ, representation and flesh, standing in both for the body and for its suffering. Their persistence across centuries, largely unchanged in form or material, unsettles art historical narratives that rely on stylistic progress.

By transforming the brain into a votive candle and setting it on a surface that suggests human skin, this work brings together devotional, anatomical, and commemorative traditions. It also recalls pre-photographic remembrance practices such as death masks, where likeness was preserved through contact with the body. Here, however, the wax is impermanent. The candle gradually melts, echoing the erosion of memory and intellect, while the hair-sprouting textile beneath it reminds us of the body’s fragility.

Together these elements generate a palpable tension. At once static and dissolving, object and organ, relic and offering, the work invites reflection on memory, corporeality, and the shifting boundaries of time.

Date: 2023

Medium: wick, beeswax, hair silicone, and

tassels.

Image taken by the artist.

A brain-shaped white wax candle with a single wick on top, placed on a bed of coarse hair against a black background.

Close-up of a candle shaped like a brain on a furry surface.

A candle shaped like a human brain resting on a piece of tan fabric with tassels, set against a black background.

Liver

Liver reflects on the body as both container and conduit, an organ that is physiological and symbolic. Cast in beeswax and stamped with the word “liver,” the work highlights the fragility of flesh and its permeability to the world around it.

Wax recalls votive traditions, where small body parts were offered in shrines as prayers for healing or thanks for recovery. These ex-votos were not substitutes for organs but symbolic stand-ins, carrying wounds, hopes, or desires. Here, wax becomes a temporal material, softening and shifting with heat and time, echoing the body’s precarious balance between endurance and dissolution.

The work also speaks to the shift from ritual to surgical repair: from wax offerings to prosthetic hearts, lungs, and joints. Liver holds this tension between devotion and intervention, interior and exterior, faith and flesh, asking us to consider the body as a site of inscription and vulnerability.

Liver, 2022

Beeswax, stamped text

26 x 15 x 4cm

Image by the artist

Black plastic-covered rectangular object with the word 'LIVER' embossed on the surface.

A black book with crinkled cover resting on top of a beige hardcover book, placed on a small table or pedestal.

Pair of roasted coffee beans on white background

Kidneys

These bronze forms sit with weight in the palm, inviting haptic and bodily connection. Their shapes shift between kidney, foetus, and phallus, blurring categories of organ, origin, and eros. Origin here is indexical, pointing back to the body as source and carrying its trace.

As a pair, the sculptures join art’s long engagement with duality. Twins and doubles provoke comparison and echo, simultaneously mirrored and distinct. Just as the body depends on the reciprocal labour of its twin kidneys, the work stages a dialogue between forms, doubled yet individual.

Each cast is also an imprint, recalling ex-votos and milagros, small body-part offerings left in shrines for healing. Biologically, kidneys cleanse and balance the body quietly and continuously. In bronze, that hidden labour is transposed into permanence, fragile organs remade as enduring votive tokens of care, healing, and the uncanny presence of the double.

Date: 2024

Medium: Bronze

Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.5 x 3cm

Image courtesy of the Artist.