Brenda Schmahmann
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 4969682 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Brenda Schmahmann |
| PRENOMES | Brenda |
| SOBRENOME | Schmahmann |
| ASSINATURA | SCHMAHMANN B |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Johannesburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8382-2645 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 41 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 14 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 40 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1988 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
Indigeneity and Visual Sovereignty
Between a Torch and a Wing
In 2015, a 3.5-meter-high sculpture by Lawrence Lemaoana was unveiled in Beyers Naude Square in front of the Central Library and facing the Gauteng Legislature in downtown Johannesburg (Fig. 1). The work depicts a female protestor who wields a placard saying “Democracy Is Dialogue”—a phrase which is also the title of the work. Carrying a child on her back (Fig. 2), she is poised with her right foot on two pillars that are angled towards one anoth…
Addressing a Difficult History
When Life Hangs by a Thread
In 2020, the Mapula Embroidery Project were commissioned to produce a series of 14 artworks in cloth on the topic of Covid-19 and its impact on their community. However, as the article reveals, the relationship of the works to the actual lived experiences of project members turned out to be complex, indirect or even paradoxical. In their choice and treatment of subject matter, members of the project sometimes represent their aspirations rather th…
Troubling Images
Senzeni Marasela’s Reworking of Women’s Histories in Beyond Booty
In September 2010, an exhibition by South African artist, Senzeni Marasela, opened at the Axis Gallery in New York. Featuring various works in fabric, their iconographies centered on two individuals. The first was Sarah Baartman, a Khoekhoe woman known disparagingly as the “Hottentot Venus” who was exhibited in the United Kingdom and France in the early nineteenth century. The focus of pseudo-scientific interest for Europeans, her body was dissec…
Troubling Histories
An Arresting Portrayal
On August 4, 2012, an extraordinary monument was unveiled on the rural outskirts of the small town of Howick in the Midlands of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa (Fig. 1). Comprising fifty discrete black steel components, each between 6.5 and 9.5 meters tall, Marco Cianfanelli's Release is approached via a paved pathway set between two embankments. While it is initially unclear what the sculpture may represent, this changes as one procee…
Troubling Histories
Monumental Mediations
Derived from a distinction that J. L. Austin drew between words that are “constative” and those that are “performative,” performativity, as Von Hantelmann (2014) explains, marks a shift in approach “from what an artwork depicts and represents to the effects and experiences that it produces.” In highlighting the interpretative process, it also emphasises meaning-making as relative. A concept central to much contemporary commemorative art, “perform…
The Cache Sexe and the Tablier
Although feminism tended to be dismissed by liberation movements as a Western import with limited relevance to those oppressed by the apartheid state, a number of white women artists in South Africa began to find in it a framework for exploring links between sexism and racism, and for expressing their opposition to both. It is suggested in this article that an important factor for this developing interest was the growing impact of a postmodernist…
Intertextual Textiles
The exploration here serves as an introduction to the special issue on Intertextual Textiles: Parodies and Quotations in Cloth. The author explores ways in which strategies of quotation and parodying – a popular strategy in postmodernism – have extended to artworks including fabric and involving needle and thread. Revealing that works in cloth may be especially amenable to approaches that trouble traditionalist understandings that a work of art m…
Sue Williamson
Venus and the Fish Wife
The works of KwaZulu-Natal ceramist, Carol Hayward Fell (born 1953), while in a number of public collections in South Africa and recognised through prestigious awards, have not hitherto been examined in depth. This article addresses this gap through a focus on works the artist made in the 1980s and early 1990s, considering how these might be interpreted in light of gender politics. Hayward Fell is contextualised as being among a first generation …
Patching Up a Community in Distress
all photos by Paul Mills, except where otherwise notedThe Keiskamma Art Project in Hamburg in the Eastern Cape of South Africa has become well known for making large-scale works, primarily in needlework but often incorporating other media, which rework iconic art objects from the West in such a way as to focus on local issues of concern. In this article I examine one such work. The Keiskamma Guernica (Fig. 1), begun late in 2009 and completed mid…
A Place That Matters Yet
Sara Byala's A Place That Matters Yet, derived from her PhD dissertation, is the first published history of MuseumAfrica in Newtown, Johannesburg – an institution formerly called the ‘Africana Muse
Adam Madebe's Ploughman and the politics of land struggles in Zimbabwe
Adam Madebe's Ploughman (1992) is mounted on a storey-high pedestal outside Hurudza House, the head office of Agribank, in Harare in Zimbabwe. Interpreting Ploughman in the context of land struggles in Zimbabwe, we suggest that the sculpture is imbued with associations that were the outcome of historical factors that saw African men being estranged from the land and African women's burdens as well as increasing disempowerment. Referring implicitl…
Picturing Change
A material paradise
The Keiskamma Art Project, an embroidery project in the village of Hamburg, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, has produced a number of large-scale works in needlework which are modelled on well-known art objects from the West. These include the Creation Altarpiece, now in the collection of the Unisa Art Gallery, which refers to the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Jan and (possibly) Hubert van Eyck. Unveiled at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. G…
Developing Images of Self
December 01 2012 Developing Images of Self: Childhood, Youth and Family Photographs in Works by Three South African Women Artists Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann is Professor of Art History & Visual Culture at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. She has a specialist interest in works by contemporary women artists in South Africa. Editor of Material Matters (2000) and co-editor (with Marion Arnold) of Between Unio…
After Bayeux
Made by isiXhosa-speaking women belonging to the Keiskamma Art Project in the village of Hamburg, South Africa, the Keiskamma Tapestry was completed midway through 2004 and has been on display at the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town since 2006. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, the work takes as its subject matter the history of the Eastern Cape Province where Hamburg is located, including the series of conflicts known as the Frontier Wars (1779-…
Bringing Cecil out of the closet
Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town each acquired keynote sculpted portraits of Cecil John Rhodes in the early twentieth century. The focus of this article is on the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the two works and how they have been negotiated in a post-apartheid context.Although its name was devised primarily as a means of acquiring monies from the Rhodes Trust, Rhodes University College (which became Rhodes Universi…
A Framework for Recuperation
September 01 2010 A Framework for Recuperation: HIV/AIDS and the Keiskamma Altarpiece Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann is Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. She has a specialist interest in community embroidery projects and works by contemporary women artists in South Africa, and is editor of Material Matters (2000) and author of Mapula: Embroidery and Empowerment in…
Face-to-face negotiations
Through a focus on Rhodes University, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Pretoria, the author explores the priorities that are normally at play when institutions commission portraits of chancellors, vice chancellors and chairs of council, and the ways in which artists have responded to these priorities.An emphasis on mimesis amongst those commissioning portraits of this type posed a challenge to artists operating in moderni…
Needled Women
Domestic violence, fear of HIV infection, lack of support from partners in bringing up children and an absence of reciprocity in their relationships with men are issues that inform the subject matter used by members of the Mapula Embroidery Project. This paper examines works that show inappropriate male behavior directly as well as those that, while seeming to be joyful in mood and suggestive of a community where men and women enjoy happy communi…
A Framework for Recuperation
September 01 2010 A Framework for Recuperation: HIV/AIDS and the Keiskamma Altarpiece Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann is Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. She has a specialist interest in community embroidery projects and works by contemporary women artists in South Africa, and is editor of Material Matters (2000) and author of Mapula: Embroidery and Empowerment in…
Addressing a Difficult History
Patching Up a Community in Distress
all photos by Paul Mills, except where otherwise notedThe Keiskamma Art Project in Hamburg in the Eastern Cape of South Africa has become well known for making large-scale works, primarily in needlework but often incorporating other media, which rework iconic art objects from the West in such a way as to focus on local issues of concern. In this article I examine one such work. The Keiskamma Guernica (Fig. 1), begun late in 2009 and completed mid…
Stitches as Sutures
A Place That Matters Yet
Sara Byala's A Place That Matters Yet, derived from her PhD dissertation, is the first published history of MuseumAfrica in Newtown, Johannesburg – an institution formerly called the ‘Africana Muse
A material paradise
The Keiskamma Art Project, an embroidery project in the village of Hamburg, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, has produced a number of large-scale works in needlework which are modelled on well-known art objects from the West. These include the Creation Altarpiece, now in the collection of the Unisa Art Gallery, which refers to the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Jan and (possibly) Hubert van Eyck. Unveiled at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. G…
Developing Images of Self
December 01 2012 Developing Images of Self: Childhood, Youth and Family Photographs in Works by Three South African Women Artists Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann is Professor of Art History & Visual Culture at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. She has a specialist interest in works by contemporary women artists in South Africa. Editor of Material Matters (2000) and co-editor (with Marion Arnold) of Between Unio…
Bringing Cecil out of the closet
Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town each acquired keynote sculpted portraits of Cecil John Rhodes in the early twentieth century. The focus of this article is on the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the two works and how they have been negotiated in a post-apartheid context.Although its name was devised primarily as a means of acquiring monies from the Rhodes Trust, Rhodes University College (which became Rhodes Universi…
Face-to-face negotiations
Through a focus on Rhodes University, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Pretoria, the author explores the priorities that are normally at play when institutions commission portraits of chancellors, vice chancellors and chairs of council, and the ways in which artists have responded to these priorities.An emphasis on mimesis amongst those commissioning portraits of this type posed a challenge to artists operating in moderni…
Conferences
Roy Lichtenstein's Critique of Modernism
Books
Dialogues, Debates and Disputes
Books
Fifth Annual Saaah Conference, July 1989
A ‘Playmate’ of a different cast(e)
Two Views
Casting a Glance, Diverting the Gaze
Casting a Look Over Miles of Images
Cast in a Different Light
Marc Chagall
Developing art projects via a public commission
In early 1999, a large-scale artwork comprised of twenty-four needlework panels was commissioned for the assembly chamber of the new legislative buildings in Riverside Government Complex in Nelspruit, the capital of Mpumalanga. Apart from including embroidery and appliques, all the panels contain beadwork and most some element of wirework
Bodies in agitation
Stitches as Sutures
Needled Women
Domestic violence, fear of HIV infection, lack of support from partners in bringing up children and an absence of reciprocity in their relationships with men are issues that inform the subject matter used by members of the Mapula Embroidery Project. This paper examines works that show inappropriate male behavior directly as well as those that, while seeming to be joyful in mood and suggestive of a community where men and women enjoy happy communi…
Figuring maternity
The Interior, Birthing Tray and Parturition are three sub-sections of a project entitled Parturient Prospects that artist Christine Dixie began in 2005, when she was pregnant with her second child, and completed by the end of 2006. In Parturient Prospects, the author reveals, Dixie situates her experiences against Western discourses, especially images from early modern Europe. Focusing on the ways in which visual representations construct woman a…
Face-to-face negotiations
Through a focus on Rhodes University, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Pretoria, the author explores the priorities that are normally at play when institutions commission portraits of chancellors, vice chancellors and chairs of council, and the ways in which artists have responded to these priorities.An emphasis on mimesis amongst those commissioning portraits of this type posed a challenge to artists operating in moderni…
A Framework for Recuperation
September 01 2010 A Framework for Recuperation: HIV/AIDS and the Keiskamma Altarpiece Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann is Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. She has a specialist interest in community embroidery projects and works by contemporary women artists in South Africa, and is editor of Material Matters (2000) and author of Mapula: Embroidery and Empowerment in…
After Bayeux
Made by isiXhosa-speaking women belonging to the Keiskamma Art Project in the village of Hamburg, South Africa, the Keiskamma Tapestry was completed midway through 2004 and has been on display at the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town since 2006. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, the work takes as its subject matter the history of the Eastern Cape Province where Hamburg is located, including the series of conflicts known as the Frontier Wars (1779-…
Bringing Cecil out of the closet
Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town each acquired keynote sculpted portraits of Cecil John Rhodes in the early twentieth century. The focus of this article is on the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the two works and how they have been negotiated in a post-apartheid context.Although its name was devised primarily as a means of acquiring monies from the Rhodes Trust, Rhodes University College (which became Rhodes Universi…
Developing Images of Self
December 01 2012 Developing Images of Self: Childhood, Youth and Family Photographs in Works by Three South African Women Artists Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann Brenda Schmahmann is Professor of Art History & Visual Culture at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. She has a specialist interest in works by contemporary women artists in South Africa. Editor of Material Matters (2000) and co-editor (with Marion Arnold) of Between Unio…
Picturing Change
A material paradise
The Keiskamma Art Project, an embroidery project in the village of Hamburg, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, has produced a number of large-scale works in needlework which are modelled on well-known art objects from the West. These include the Creation Altarpiece, now in the collection of the Unisa Art Gallery, which refers to the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Jan and (possibly) Hubert van Eyck. Unveiled at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. G…
A Place That Matters Yet
Sara Byala's A Place That Matters Yet, derived from her PhD dissertation, is the first published history of MuseumAfrica in Newtown, Johannesburg – an institution formerly called the ‘Africana Muse
Art (23 obras) · Sociology (20 obras) · History (16 obras) · Political science (15 obras) · Visual arts (15 obras) · Art history (13 obras) · Law (12 obras) · South African History and Culture (12 obras) · Art, Politics, and Modernism (11 obras) · Aesthetics (8 obras)