Keeping it together

This panel by Elsa Gouws Smit was created through a handcrafted photomontage using fragments of archival giclée prints of the artist’s own photographs of Cape Town’s wild seas. Thousands of elements were cut with micro-dissecting scissors and reassembled through intuitive layering. Expressing the artist’s fascination with the unfathomable scale and power of the sea, the work contains its vastness within a simple geometric shape. The contrast between order and chaos generates a visual and cerebral tension on the nature of perception.

CRAFTED BY

Elsa Gouws Smit

Collage artist | Cape Town, South Africa

Sorry, this object is not included in the Homo Faber 2026 Awards.