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2 DECADES +
INTRODUCTION by Elfriede Dreyer
Symbolically, Majak Bredell's departure in 1981 from her motherland, South
Africa, to New York and her return in 2004, seem to be reflected in her
journey into imagery of marriage and patriarchy, and her return to the
primordial female. In this retrospective body of work spanning more than two
decades of creative work, the artist abundantly explores the complexities of
her subject and manages to evoke a sense of fragility and transience in her
depictions of being in the world.
Majak's work displays a process of contestation regarding social and gender
roles that started in the 1980s and is still continuing, similar to the groundbreaking
work of first-wave feminists of the 1960s and early 1970s who
emphasised art as an activity, and a “form of praxis” (Taylor 1968:28).
Her work articulates female experiences of differing disparities, but also
transgresses the boundaries of patriarchy from the inside.
Yet, although the full circle in terms of gender and cultural Other has been
completed, such contestation simultaneously expanded into questions about
god-making, connections and consciousness.The body of work does reflect
a leaning towards 'goddess' imagery, a movement that grew out of secondwave
feminism of the 1970s and the acute realisation that masculine gender
and male imagery were attached to deity to the prohibition of feminine
gender and female imagery*. As antidote, then, the feminist interpretation of
“goddess”, mostly describes deity as female, as a metaphor, or as a process.
Throughout the artist's search for spirituality, roots and 'true' identity, images of
drapery, crossing lines, boundaries, layering and repetition have surfaced again
and again. Series of trees with crossing branches reaching out and embracing,
often in encirclement with the human torso, encapsulate such yearning for
spiritual intimacy and fulfilment. Ambiguously, although longing for reconciliation
and completion, her bodies appear whole and absolute. For Majak, it seems,
the search remains a reciprocal process whereby, as the artist has stated
herself, the interaction of the consciousness of humankind on the consciousness
of 'god', and vice versa, gives symbolic form to the sacred image. Such sanction
she does not find in goddess imagery per se, but rather in the concept of the
sacred intrinsic in the mundane of human commonalities, in being human.
Using metaphors of spinning, weaving and connecting, Majak's work on one
hand links with Feminist interests in female handiwork and crafting, but on the
other hand confirms the act of creating of the artwork as an act of 'weaving'
cosmic connectedness. Such oscillation between depiction and figurative
meaning never lapses into hierarchy, but remains a process of strategic embodiment.
In the end, her visual synthesis of gender, spirituality and nature, supported by
lots of poetic writing, turns into a polarisation of femininity and feminism.
A striking and characteristic feature of Majak's work is the sense of patterning
and design that, considered in conjunction with her almost pantheistic inclinations,
may be interpreted as reflecting a cosmic view of gender. It is as if she is
suggesting that underneath the visible real there is a universal blueprint for the
connectedness of beings and nature that goes beyond the political and personal.
Interwoven in timeless depictions of human presence, the artist's soft protesting
voice is constantly found -- never angry, always speculative.
Elfriede Dreyer, March 2007
* Whereas American first-wave feminists (such as Matilda Gage) proposed the idea of female
deity, it is not until second-wave feminism that lasted until the late 1980s that women were
encouraged to understand their identities as historically politicised and reflecting of a sexist
structure of power.
Source quoted:
Taylor, S. 1968.The Women Artists' Movement: From Radical to Cultural Feminism,
1969 - 1975. In Personal and Political:The Women's Art Movement, 1969 - 1975.
Catalogue for the exhibition curated by Simon Taylor and Natalie Ng, August 10 -
October 20, 2002. Easthampton, New York: Guild Hall Museum.
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