Jeannette Unite

AVA Exhibition: GEOMATICS: LAND | LAW | ORE (Solo Show)| 24.04.25 - 05.06.25

Since living on high security alluvial diamond mines in the 1990s, Jeannette Unite has focused on Africa’s rich and contentious mineral histories and the ways in which humans exploit our planet.

Her artistic, archival, and on-the-ground research explores how mineral extraction impacts the Earth. Conversations with industrialists, Earth scientists and mining historians inform Unite’s practice and research, which dwells on the ongoing role of mining in (re)producing colonial power relations – and our own complicity in modern day systems.

This focus has resulted in a highly personal body of work, with different pieces having been exhibited internationally in museums and biennales in Europe and the US under the titles: TERRA, COMPLICIT GEOGRAPHIES and PLOT. GEOMATICA: MINERALS | LAW | ORE, which was presented in Spain in 2024-25, included a selection of aerial photographs, now seen as redundant technology, gifted by the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University.

The artist recycles mineral ores and detritus grinding them into her drawings and paintings. Her palette consists of jars filled with mining matter and objects and elements collected from travels to remote extraction sites in 32 countries on four continents, and organised into idiosyncratic periodic tables. This process and media imbue her pieces with extraordinary material qualities inherent in our Earth.

Instagram: @jeannette.unite