Bubblegum Club

Tag: digital collage

  • Trotse Tert // The alter ego unapologetically embracing loneliness

    Trotse Tert // The alter ego unapologetically embracing loneliness

    Blünke Janse van Rensburg is the mistress and mastermind behind Trotse Tert. A figure of femininity caught in an emblazoned desert of lonely hearts. Digital collage is a visual manifestation of her Old-Western-meets-neon-snake-pit aesthetic. Her creative practice integrates elements of self-empowerment, feminist rhetoric, religious iconography and sexuality.

    Each element in her images is loaded with personal symbolism. Her encasing flames are symbolic of resounding endurance, “the fire within me hasn’t burned out yet. I haven’t given up. I’m still here and I’m gonna give it my all.” This juxtaposed with abundant bouquets of flowers are representative of emotional fragility. Slithering serpents further articulate Trotse Tert as a complex creative iteration. “I’m always scheming. Don’t brush off my mischievous looks. I’m pretty, but don’t step on me cause you’ll realise I’m poison.”

    Trotse Tert was initially a mode of escapism, “I personally was feeling erg sad, lonely, bored, uninspired and that needed to change. So, I decided to get creative again and see where it goes. Out of my list of names, Trotse Tert stood out the most. Stuck in a boring town that had an aesthetic with potential, I saw my chance and grabbed it.” Blünke describes how Trotse Tert was a kind of salvation, “she was just the person I needed to be at that time to help me escape my current situation. Now she is much more than that. She’s out of Die Moot. She’s a bit older and much more confident.”

    Her alter ego has developed from, “being a girl hanging out in dodgy dive bars with old disgusting men ogling at her, drinking the loneliness away and always going home with a broken heart and tears in her eyes ’cause this isn’t what she wanted for herself to leaving, making better decisions, taking responsibility and rescuing herself. Throwing petrol on the flame within her and moving on to better things.” Trotse Tert is an articulation of being one’s own proverbial knight in snake-skin armour.

    Blünke is also interested in creating a communal-lonely space for catharsis. “The lonely desert is a space where all the loners could gather, coming together to embrace their loneliness. You have to love yourself, take care of yourself and focus on yourself and maybe the lonely desert is the perfect place to do so.” Her interests also extend beyond the digital screen and into fashion. “It’s still the beginning for me, I have so much that I need to so, so much that I want to do. I haven’t reached my full potential yet, so I’ll be working on that, pushing my work forward. I’ve been working on something for the longest time now and these digital art works is a teaser of what’s to come.”

     

    Trotse Tert is still chasing dreams and bad boys in fast cars

    drifting through the lonely dessert

    fighting the loneliness with booze and cigarettes

    erg poisonous and dangerous like her pet snakes

    fuck cake, eat her tart instead

    she’s ur queen now

     

    Digital art – Trotse Tert

    Photography – Koos Groenewald

    Styling – Gavin Mikey Collins

  • Trotse Tert // Advocating Self-Acceptance in the Digital Age

    In the pastel pink Wild-West of bejeweled flip-phones, albino pythons and shotguns Blünke Janse van Rensburg reigns kween. Soft sunsets merge into mountainous peaks and ravines. An imagined reality of unapologetic self-actualization. A space between nostalgia and now. An insertion of self into the visual imagery of the early 2000’s internet aesthetic. Trotse Tert explores digital space on her own terms.

    Trotse Tert was spawned from the Afrikaans environment of Die Moot, Pretoria.“I was bored and very lonely, so I decided to create Trotse Tert and dedicate every moment in between nonsense to it. The name sounds a bit conservative but obviously it’s not. I could do much better at being a tart, it’s a time of exploring and not feeling ashamed of it. So it felt right and very applicable to call it exactly what it is I was trying to do.”

    Blünke describes her digital aesthetic as, “erg trashy, but trashy chic. Superficial and contradicting AF.” She was drawn to digital collage over its analogue ancestor because, “firstly, it’s less messy. I don’t have to spit and paste, although that is fun too, but no sticky fingers are involved. Secondly, it’s the possibility to create everything and anything. At this point in time, reality is really restricting, I can’t go where I want and I can’t have what I want, but in digital form it’s all mine. I take ownership of the things around me. I have it all there because I created it for myself. Thirdly, I’m such a forgetful person, I forget my passions and dreams when times get tough so the collages really helps to put things in perspective again.”

    Having graduated from the Elizabeth Galloway Academy of Fashion Design Blünke also engages in the space of fashion design. She considers each piece she creates, in fashion or collage as imbuing an alternative conceptual relevance. “Mostly it just reflects my feelings, dreams and desires while other times it’s just pretty nothingness. I also like to think that the collages speak for themselves. Everything I place in a collage means something to me. You are allowed to make your own assumptions on what everything represents.” She is interested in people’s own reflections and insights.

    The ideological framework that Blünke draws on is rooted in a sense of self-acceptance. “Accepting who I am, alone, without anyone else,” is at the crux of it, “you could have really amazing and supportive people in your life that can believe in you endlessly, but you also have to motivate yourself, you have to believe in yourself to get up every day and work towards the things you want, the things that is needed to be done. That’s not easy. So it’s about truly and fully believing in oneself and realising its hard and sometimes very lonely. It also feeds on self discovery and innovation.”