Artist Pierre le Riche's second solo exhibiton at Ronewa, titled 'My Body Is Not Your Temple', opens on September 11. Ahead of the opening, we chatted to the South-African textile and sculpture artist about his new series of vibrant wall tapestries and the defiant and celebratory personal themes behind the bodies he composes in wool.
April Dell: For your second solo show with Ronewa, your latest works continue themes of queer identity and belonging. How have these themes developed in your work? How do they play out in this new series?
Pierre le Riche: In my earlier work, I often drew upon queer identity to explore my heritage, cultural identity, family dynamics, and belonging. Over time, the focus has shifted more inward, to the body itself as a site of both vulnerability and empowerment. In this new series, the idea of belonging isn’t just about external structures like community or family, but about how I relate to my own body, how it ages, transforms, and carries memory. The works stage queer bodies in ritualistic spaces, asking how we can create belonging for ourselves when the world doesn’t always offer or accept it.
Pierre le Riche, "The Worshipping", 2025, Acrylic yarn on polyester cloth, 165 x 175 cm. 65 x 68 7/8 in.
AD: Has your art making always been very personal?
PLR: Yes, absolutely. My practice has always drawn from personal history, from migration to queerness to intimacy. But in this series, the personal becomes even more exposed—it leans into inner conflict, into rituals of self-preservation, and into the complexity of loving and reclaiming one’s body. I think the work allows the viewer to glimpse something private but also recognisable: the struggle to be at peace in one’s own skin.
AD: The exhibition title speaks to these themes of inner conflict and self-preservation. Please tell me about the title ‘My Body Is Not Your Temple’.
PLR: The title is very deliberately a rebellion, but also a refusal. I grew up with the Calvinist idea that “your body is God’s temple,” a teaching that shaped Afrikaner identity in a way that was often suffocating and moralising. To say “my body is not your temple” is to flip that doctrine on its head and to reclaim ownership over myself. It rejects the idea that my body exists to be sanctified, controlled, or burdened with other people’s projections of purity and morality.
Instead, it opens up space to acknowledge the body for what it truly is: lived in. It is a vessel that carries history, trauma, sexuality, and joy all at once. By naming it as “not your temple,” I resist its objectification and discipline, and I also insist on the possibility of celebrating it as my own – queer, imperfect, and worthy.
Exhibition view, 'In Four Places at Once' by Pierre le Riche, 2024, Ronewa Art Projects, Berlin. Photo: Jeremy Knowles.
AD: Your tapestry images begin as sketches. What do you feel gets added or altered when your figures are rendered in tufted wool?
PLR: The translation into tufted wool adds both tactility and permanence. A sketch can be fleeting, but wool has weight and presence. The softness of the material complicates the imagery: figures that might appear tense or fragmented in a drawing gain a sensual, almost bodily texture in textile. At the same time, tufting introduces its own abstraction; the line of the drawing becomes bulkier, fuzzier, more imperfect. That material transformation mirrors the themes of the work: how bodies are never fixed, but always shifting in texture, presence, and form.
AD: You work with vivid color in your tapestries and your ceramic practice. What do you like about expressing yourself through color?
PLR: Colour, for me, is unapologetic. It refuses to be subtle or to hide. There’s a queerness in that boldness—a refusal to blend quietly into the background. Vivid colours activate the work emotionally, and they carry psychological weight. They can be celebratory, sensual, even confrontational. Using colour allows me to push against restraint, to declare presence, and to bring vibrancy to subjects that might otherwise feel heavy or dark.
Pierre le Riche: My Body Is Not Your Temple
Opening: September 11, 18:00—21:00
September 12—November 1, 2025
Exhibition Press Release EN/DE
About the author
April Dell
April Dell is an art writer from New Zealand, living and working in Berlin since 2012. As the gallery manager and communications manager at Ronewa Art Projects, April showcases Ronewa's roster of international artists through exhibition project management, press coordination, and online communication channels.
Contemporary art has long been a passion of hers, and she loves nothing more than experiencing and writing about art. She has a B.A. from Otago University, New Zealand, where she studied Art History and Film and Media Studies. April also has a Graduate Certificate in Communications and Public Relations and provides communications services within the arts and culture industry.
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