Blue Madonna

This current body of work is a personal response to the historic omission of Afrikaner female identities constrained by Calvinist patriarchy in order to establish how this legacy of suppression continued to affect gender roles, religious control, and social disparities during the twentieth century.

My aim is to show how artworks can ‘speak’ and are thus able to fill the archival gaps of previously marginalized groups. I attempt to counteract the undervaluation of women and craft in my work by combining the subversive strategy of embroidery as fine art with the actual act of stitching in order to ‘suture’ alternative identities. The torn 1938 topographical maps of The Union of South Africa are incorporated to highlight troubling legacies and as disruption of patriarchal hierarchies.