In a show with Nancy Toomy in 2024, Philip Willem Badenhorst created a visually intricate body of paintings that explored the historical and cultural connections between East and West through abstract patterns and symbols. Badenhorst is inspired by literature on the Silk Road and porcelain, while reflecting on themes of memory, spirituality, and the passage of time.

As an avid reader, the main source for Philip Willem Badenhorst’s work has always been tracking and tracing moods and images from a wide range of world literature. For this exhibition Badenhorst delved into Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, along with Edmund de Waal’s The White Road: Journey into an Obsession on the history of p...