Portrait of South African artist Walter Oltmann

For his installation, titled World Map, Oltmann created a hand-woven with aluminium wire map.

Africa is at the centre of the map and copper wires radiate from the southern part indicating the movement of humankind from Africa to all areas of the world.The work is an artistic impression of Mercator’s projection of the earth (The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection presented by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569; it became the standard map projection for navigation because of its unique property of representing any course of constant bearing as a straight segment).
Oltmann is well-known for his work with wire, particularly his creation of insect and animal forms. While it is a widespread media employed in South Africa today, Walter brings a new technique to working with wire; he knits the strands together