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27 August 2021 | Story Angela de Jesus and Rulanzen Martin | Photo Artwork courtesy of UNISA Art Collection


Folds and Faults: An Exhibition of African Women Artists Examining Identity, Culture, and Heritage. 

Arts copy
   (Gwenneth Miller, Folds, Assumed abundance, 2019, Oil on canvas, 91,5 x 183 cm.)

The Johannes Stegmann gallery at the University of the Free State (UFS), in collaboration with Curate.A.Space, is proud to present Folds and Faults: An Exhibition of African Women Artists Examining Identity, Culture, and Heritage. The exhibition is a tribute to courageous women through the works of an all-female artist group. 

Carol Brown, Zinhle Khumalo from Curate.A.Space, and Angela de Jesus curated the exhibition, which will run virtually as well as at the Stegmann Gallery in the Sasol Library on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus.

Details:
18 August 2021-17 September 2021
Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, Sasol Library,  University of the Free State. 

“The theme of folds has many layers – as a fold itself implies. Fabric is what immediately comes to mind, but the action of folding can take too many levels. This exhibition explores these complexities.” 

Background: 
The exhibition features artworks by women artists in particular – a second generation of female artists whose mothers were part of the era when the historic 1956 Women’s March in Pretoria chanted the song, Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokodo (You strike a woman, you strike a rock).

Looking back on those dark years of apartheid, we remember how women were disenfranchised and disempowered. There were only a few black female artists, and the protest art made at the time was mostly by men. The women were the caregivers who took care of domestic issues and were the nurturers of the future generations whose work is now featured in this exhibition. 

News Archive

“We relied on outsiders to document our histories.” – Zanele Muholi delivers Women’s Day Lecture
2014-08-13

 

Zanele Muholi
Photo: Stephen Collett

“Our society is decaying because of hate crimes against LGBTI groups. You can’t say it does not affect you, because each of us is at least connected to one person [of LGBTI orientation].”

These words by Zanele Muholi, photographer and visual activist of LGBTI rights, who delivered the Women’s Day Lecture. The event commemorated Women’s Day and took place on Thursday 7 August 2014 at the Bloemfontein Campus. The lecture was hosted by the Centre for Africa Studies, as part of their Gender Studies Programme.

Muholi screened photographs featuring lesbian couples and recounted their all-too-real life stories. Her work emphasises the importance of queering the normative gaze by representing black lesbians in ‘straight’ portraits in a collection of works titled ‘Faces and Phases’. By focusing on lesbians in her work, Muholi shows that women in same sex relationships are just women, with the same dreams and aspirations as their heterosexual sisters.

But lesbian women carry an additional, grave fear – that of corrective rape. Muholi speaks on this topic in the video, ‘We live in fear’, which she screened during her talk. The documentary features the lives of lesbian women in Kwa Thema township in Johannesburg. Shockwaves spread through this settlement in 2008 after the brutal killing of a lesbian woman and the ensuing series of hate crimes against the LGBTI community.

Zanele describes her work as “documenting our own stories. For years we relied on outsiders to document our histories. We should do it ourselves.”

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