Canvas 2021: The first student event after lockdown
The amphitheatre was a creative art gallery for NWU hostels this past weekend as the 2021 Canvas took place on Friday, 9 April, continuing until Saturday, 10 April.
Canvas is one of six events hosted annually by the Student Campus Council (SCC) arts council for residences. The theme this year was “Dictionary”. Eliska Wentzel (22), SCC vice-chairperson of administration and private students, said that residences had the option to choose any word from the dictionary and illustrate or explain the word, without using the actual word, on the canvas. “This gives residences a bit of creativity and creative freedom to go in any direction they want to,” Wentzel said.
Marlé Ribbens (22), deputy primaria for the house committee (HC) on discipline and arts from Wanda women’s residence, said: “We are very excited and love Canvas so much, and each year brings forth great fun. Given the theme dictionary, we chose the word ‘ubuntu’. We wanted to choose something relevant not only in our campus residences but also to South Africa as a whole. Both Wanda and Patria men’s residence live an ubuntu lifestyle, and the university as well. Ubuntu is a very selfless phrase and that’s what we want to send out, ‘I am because you are’.”
Other hostels that experimented with their creative side were Minjonet and Excelsior. Their word from the dictionary was “poppekas”. “We feel like society has excessive control in our lives, that’s why we chose puppet show. There is a QR code on the puppet’s hand, and when scanned it will take struggling people to websites to help them. Our canvas wanted to focus on helping people to get rid of the controlling element in our lives. We want to take each other’s hands and help each other to break the links between people and the things controlling them”, said Marisca Krüger (21), from the arts HC.
Minjonet and Excelsior’s 2021 Canvas. They chose “poppekas” as a word from the dictionary. (Picture: Zandile Khumalo) 
From the left: Charl Ellis (21), arts and religion HC member of Excelsior man’s residence, and to the right is Marisca Krüger (21), from the arts HC of Minjonet women’s hostel. (Picture: Zandile Khumalo)
Canvas has become more than just a platform for hostels to paint. It aims to inspire students to participate in art on campus as well as to bring back the exceptional student life on campus that students have been longing for since the start of the pandemic.
Christiaan De Wet (21), BA Graphic Design with Communication student and one of the selected painters for Laureus man’s hostel, has been participating in Canvas for four years now. “I look forward to Canvas every year because I get the chance to see how my techniques have improved after each year’s canvas. It’s amazing to see how comfortable you’ve become with yourself after a few years. You get to acknowledge the confidence that you’ve built in yourself and with the others you paint with.”
“When you stand under the amphitheatre and look up to see your canvas is finished against the wall, you know that there are so many people doing it for the whole year, looking at the paintings and wondering what each canvas depicts. This becomes a reward for every hostel and every painter participating in Canvas,” De Wet said.
In the audio clip below Ané Janse van Rensburg (20), arts and maintenance hallway HC member from Heide women’s residence, speaks about what inspired their canvas with Ratau men’s residence.
Measures were put in place to help prevent Covid-19 case numbers from rising on campus during the event. This meant that painting hours changed from 12 hours to 21 hours, over two days, including 15-minute breaks for painters, and only a limited number of people were allowed to tag in and out of the amphitheatre, said Wentzel.
This year’s Canvas was different, without students watching the creations, but the success of this event will determine whether or not other council social events can be held on campus, and the paintings are now in the amphitheatre for everyone to see.