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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

I-DENT-I-TIES to shine at the Free State Arts Festival
2016-07-08

Description: I-DENT-I-TIES  Tags: I-DENT-I-TIES

Erwin Maas with members of the student cast from the
Qwaqwa Campus. They are, from left: Mpho Xaba,
Lebohang Molefe and Tankiso Mofokeng.

Imagine this: A student cast from a rural campus; Production team consisting of a New York-based Dutch director, a South African screen and stage legend, a The Hague/Vienna-based Dutch theatre designer, and a Vienna-based Serbian performance-craft-artist and designer.

This sounds like a far-fetched flight of the imagination. But it is real and it is called ‘I-DENT-I-TIES’, a large-scale interdisciplinary performance project with international theatre professionals and students from the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Qwaqwa Campus.

According to the  director of the project, Erwin Maas, the production explores the ‘dents’ and ‘ties’ of both individual and communal identification and distinctiveness and does this through the famous Basotho story of ‘Moshanyana Sankatana’ as a point of departure.

“We explore questions like ‘what are dents in our society as well as in ourselves’, ‘what ties me to who I really am and who I want to be’, ‘what does it mean to be me’, ‘what does it mean to be South African’,” said Maas, who has been working on this project since last year.

The production also celebrates personal, communal, and universal narratives and identities through song, dance, story-telling, and music. It explores the past, the present, and the future.

“This production will certainly reveal an extraordinary journey into what makes us unique and binds us together,” he added during the rehearsals that started in May at the Qwaqwa Campus.

Maas has teamed up with a well-known South African film and stage legend, Jerry Mofokeng, as consultant. Mofokeng, who introduced Maas to the ‘Sankatana’ story, has featured on a number of critically-acclaimed films that include ‘Cry, The Beloved Country’ as well as the Academy Award-winning ‘Tsotsi’. Maas has also worked with the Hague/Vienna-based Dutch designer Nico de Rooij and Djana Covic, a Vienna-based Serbian designer.

The production is a partnership between the UFS Student Affairs, Vrystaat Arts Festival, the Programme for Innovation in Artform Development, and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa. It will premiere at the Free State Arts Festival, held in Bloemfontein from 11 to 16 July 2016. This will be followed by a performance at the Qwaqwa Campus on 19 July 2016.

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