South African-born multidisciplinary artist Pierre Louis Geldenhuys returns home with “The Planet is Screaming, Listen to Mother Earth”, a profoundly moving series that merges geometric precision with an urgent environmental narrative. Presented at the 2026 edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, the work deepens a practice that has evolved over two decades across theatre, fashion, geometry, and textile abstraction.
Based in Spain for the past fifteen years, Geldenhuys has drawn significant inspiration from the Arab architecture of the region, particularly the mathematical discipline and spiritual resonance of Islamic tessellation. This influence has propelled him into a singular visual language where geometry becomes both structure and metaphor. What began as an exploration of beauty and symmetry has, in recent years, transformed into a conceptual inquiry: a way of interrogating humanity’s fraught relationship with nature, and the increasingly fragile ecosystems on which life depends.
At the centre of his technique is a distinctive approach to tessellation. Working from a single piece of raw silk, uncut, unsewn, and manipulated only through folding, Geldenhuys constructs intricate geometric sequences that unfold into three-dimensional, near-infinite compositions. These works are then activated by the presence of freely falling threads, which interrupt the rigidity of the pattern with gestures of softness, release, and unpredictability. Encased in light boxes, the pieces take on an x-ray luminosity: an interplay of shadow and depth that draws the viewer into a landscape of folds, fractures, and quiet movement. The result is a dialogue between order and organic imperfection, a choreography of geometry and breath.
“The Planet is Screaming, Listen to Mother Earth” extends this dialogue into a wider ecological reflection. The series uses the life cycle of the vine as a metaphor for environmental rupture and regeneration. In viticulture, pruning is an act of attention, a process guided by listening to the subtle cues embedded in the plant’s structure: the direction of its shoots, the history contained in its scars, the flow of its sap. When the vine “weeps,” it reveals both its wound and its capacity for renewal. Geldenhuys draws power from this image. The weeping vine becomes a conduit for understanding the planet’s own fractures: the melting ice, the loss of species, polluted oceans, scorched landscapes, and the quiet but insistent signals of imbalance.
Images courtesy of Pierre Louis Geldenhuys
Rather than offering accusation, the work invites contemplation. It asks what might change if humanity embraced a culture of listening before acting, if care, restraint, and reciprocity replaced expansion, domination, and extraction. Just as the vine’s sap nourishes new growth, Geldenhuys proposes a possibility for a more conscious future: one shaped not by crisis alone but by the wisdom surfaced through rupture.
Across the folds of silk, hundreds of metres of thread trace paths that resemble topographies, roots, rivers, and fault lines. They accumulate, disperse, and rest, forming a textile terrain that is simultaneously fragile and resilient. This sense of mutability mirrors the ecosystems the work speaks for: alive, responsive, and continuously shaped by the pressures imposed upon them. It is in this tension between wound and repair, geometry and gesture, silence and outcry- that the heart of Geldenhuys’ work emerges.
Pierre Louis Geldenhuys offers not a warning, but an invitation: to observe more closely, to listen more deeply, and to consider the possibility that regeneration begins with attention.
Selected works will be Investec Cape Town Art Fair from 19-22 February 2026
In alignment with the fair’s 2026 theme, LISTEN, Geldenhuys’s work becomes a quiet manifesto for paying attention. Every fold, thread, and illuminated plane functions as an echo of the world’s own murmurs, the kind that are easily missed in a culture of haste. His textiles invite viewers to listen not only with the ear, but with the eye and the body: to sense what is fragile, to recognise what is slipping away, and to imagine what might still be restored.
Images courtesy of Pierre Louis Geldenhuys
About the Artist
Pierre Louis Geldenhuys (b. 1971, South Africa) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans textile art, geometry, fashion, and theatre. Educated at the Tshwane University of Technology and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, he has developed a distinctive approach to tessellation and textile manipulation, working primarily with raw silk to create multi-dimensional geometric compositions. Now based in Spain, his work explores the intersections between structure and fluidity, ecology and abstraction, and the evolving relationship between humans and the natural world.
Artist comment:
“I work from a metaphor that I call the ‘delirium of living space’, a critical reflection on the human drive to expand its area of influence and control, often at the expense of nature and environmental balance. Through my work, I aim to convey the urgent need to listen to the silent cry of nature and to recognise the pressing responsibility to protect our planet. At the same time, I strive to offer an optimistic vision of the world, sending an eco-positive and hopeful message about our shared future”.
Website: www.pierrelouis.es
Instagram: @pierrelouisg
Press release courtesy of Lume Agency
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