Difficult Women packs Gallery
Spira Tlhankane | Friday March 13, 2020 15:18
The exhibition that runs until April 11, 2020 features six of Botswana’s foremost contemporary women artists being Neo Matome, Ann Gollifer, Renée Eisen-Khonat, Sedireng Mothibatsela, Veryan Edwards and Kate Kwati.
All of the artists have been key contributors to the local art scene and creative industries in various capacities over the past 20 years.
Difficult Women exhibition is a first of its kind in Botswana. Its peculiarity is that the exhibition itself seeks to address and present a dialogue about gender equity within the arts, why women artists are not better represented within the country. It also creates an ongoing social conversation about key gender-based issues surrounding the ‘place’, rights and experiences of the ‘Woman’ within the society.
Some of the artworks at the gallery include Matome’s installation titled ‘essence of being’ and a textile medium titled ‘square peg in a round hole’. One of the exhibitors Kwati who showcased her installation through a performance during the opening night has a series of abstract paintings called ‘caged’. During her performance at the opening night, Kwati showed how women get heartbroken and after sometime their fix the mess themselves and sometimes through the help of the Bible.
Mothibatsela’s oil on canvas painting is simply outstanding and it is titled‘Women belong in the kitchen. Men belong in the kitchen. Everybody belong in the kitchen’. She also has the ‘I am not always a delicate flower’ series.
Gollifer brings something spiritual with her paintings like ‘Moonrise on Spring tide.’ But her thought-provoking artworks is where she uses multimedia digital images and watercolour pencil to express herself through the ‘Hyena women – thinking of you thinking of me’ series.
As for Edwards, her paintings include titles like ‘Protective spirit’ and ‘Journey in love’. Her other mixed media on canvas paintings titled ‘Bridging the gap’ and ‘Strife to peace’ is part of her Black Universe, “Cosmos Is I” series in which she dominantly uses the blue colour.
In an interview with Arts & Culture during the opening night Edwards said she likes to express a lot of things to tell in a form, feeling and in chaotic symbols. As an abstract artist she also said her artworks help people feel what she is feeling when working on it.
“The protective spirit artwork showcases the symbol of female power. It reiterates that words that women need to be protected. May women can’t be safe because nowadays women aren’t really safe,” she highlighted. She said she uses the womb in her artworks as a safe place for humanity and creation. Edwards who has been painting since 1970 admitted that being an artist is very difficult especially when one is still young.
“It is hard to make money out of art so it has to be about the need to express yourself. If you have something to say you find a way to say it. It is not about the money unless you are lucky,” she further revealed.
Edwards advised younger female artists to believe in themselves. She said she has always helped women artists to study, learn and grow.
“I hope that more recognition could be given to Batswana women artists,” she said.
As the originator and main curator of the show, Eisen-Khonat mostly features works about roses. In one of her paintings she shows a magnolia. “Magnolia symbolises dignity and nobility. In ancient China, magnolias were thought to be the perfect symbol of womanly beauty and gentleness. Magnolia often symbolises, Yin or the feminine side of life,” reads a description on the artwork titled Maria/Magnolia.
Eisen-Khonat hopes that the exhibition will spur a movement amongst women in the Botswana arts, drawing attention to the value of the female artist’s role as a social advocate through their artistic vernacular.
The exhibition was borne out of Eisen-Khonat’s observation that “the female voice is not heard loudly enough within the local art scene, and now, more than ever, needs to be”.
With seldom-to-no-all-women group or female solo art exhibitions being held on a regular basis within the country, she believes that the exhibition needs to become an annual platform from which female artists in Botswana can carve out a niche for themselves within the national and international art scene.