Biography

Onthatile More is a South African sculptor whose creative roots trace back to a childhood steeped in art and craft. She learned early that beauty often hides in tension, contrast and the quiet details others might overlook . Long accustomed to moving within quiet boundaries, subtle yet unyielding limits that define what can be reached for and what must be endured. She has built a practice around exploring the tension between captivity and release, restraint and power .

 

Her work is somatic and trauma‑informed. Rather than depicting the body, she interrogates its instinctive responses to pain, absence and survival. Raw materials and industrial armatures are exposed rather than hidden; forms curl, fragment or pull inward, reflecting the way the nervous system protects itself under threat. She captures moments when breath catches just before a scream, showing the body poised between suppression and release. Her sculpture has been described as clinical minimalism and anatomical brutalism: clean lines, harsh logic, no decoration. She chooses mediums such as Jesmonite, clay and cast stone , and each piece emerges from an obsessive, meticulous process of refining and distilling until the form feels inevitable. While her surfaces carry a softness reminiscent of Impressionism, they are anchored in anatomical precision; every sculpture meditates on what it means to be seen and what must remain deliberately obscured .

 

A background in psychology deepens her exploration. More is attuned to the emotional states that echo within the body, and she uses art as a vessel for what cannot be said aloud . Her commitment to healing through art extends beyond the studio. She founded the Work of Art Foundation, a nonprofit that uses creative practice to bring joy, healing and exploration to under‑resourced and hospitalised children across South Africa . Each piece she creates becomes both an investigation of the body’s survival instincts and a form of care, a portal toward what viewers might be yearning to touch, to flee or to finally see .