Born in Germany into a family of artists, writers and musicians, Leli Hoch studied sociology, psychology and education before embarking on years of work in outdoor tourism, leading an adventurous life shaped by movement through wild landscapes and direct encounters with the natural world. These experiences continue to feed her artistic practice. Now based in Stanford, South Africa, she works as an artist and curator and initiates artist residencies that bring creative practice into dialogue with landscape, ecology and the social and political realities that shape our relationship with the world.

Artist Statement

“My work begins with situations that draw my attention, unsettle me or leave me with questions. These may be social or political events, encounters with the natural world, or traces of violence, loss and transformation. I respond through art, seeking forms that can hold something of their complexity and urgency.

An artwork can bear witness, mark a place or create a space in which something is encountered differently.

Working with photography, earth pigments, plant-based inks, textiles, stitching and found materials, I explore how their properties and transformations can carry meaning. Ecological relationships inform my practice alongside poetry, observation and embodied experience.

Each work evolves through an encounter between the situation that prompts it, the materials I engage with and the unexpected possibilities of making. I seek neither to explain nor resolve what I encounter, but to create a response that remains open to complexity, contradiction and meanings that cannot be fully settled.”

Leli Hoch is one of the founders of the Tankwa Artscape Residency and the founder and facilitator of Bodhi Khaya Residency South Africa www.bodhikhayaresidency.co.za