Jenna Burchell is a project-based South African artist who creates alternative archives that fuse digital and natural elements to preserve stories and memories. Her interactive works invite audiences to engage with complex, often overlooked narratives – whether everyday or historical.

Projects such as ‘Songsmith’ and ‘Heartbreak Pots’ exemplify her approach to blending technology and storytelling in the service of history, place and connection.

Guided by relational and stochastic processes, Burchell collaborates with the materials, landscapes, and people she encounters. These interactions allow her works to grow organically, embedding layers of meaning and memory into each piece. The results are sculptural sound objects and large-scale interactive environments – vessels, archives and libraries that preserve and share layered stories.

Sound is a recurring element, inviting audiences into narratives through touch and interactive technology. Recurring themes of fracture and repair weave in and out of her works.

This work is from the Spier Arts Collection.

South African artist Jenna Burchell has exhibited at national and international museums, galleries, and institutions. Her major projects, Homing (2014–2016) and Songsmith (2016–ongoing), are evolving bodies of work spanning multiple years. A permanent outdoor ‘Songsmith’ installation resides at Spier Wine Estate, Stellenbosch.

Burchell was commissioned for a large-scale memorial at the Sarah Baartman Center of Memory (2019–ongoing) and recently completed a community-driven visual redress project at Stellenbosch University (2024). In 2024, Burchell debuted ‘Heartbreak Pots’ at The Wake, the central curated exhibition of the Dak’Art Biennale.