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2 DECADES +

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

The Western mindset was created by a male-dominated society using biblical interpretation to form and reinforce patriarchal attitudes towards, and beliefs about, women. It is against this long and pernicious legacy that I make much of my art - at first I bypassed the god of my childhood by imagining a much older egalitarian and undogmatic spirituality - and later to actually re-imagine and re-member god as woman. Although this is, in part, a spiritual quest, it is mostly informed by feminism and my concerns about how women's relationship with their bodies and themselves were impacted by religiously ordained misogyny. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton conceived of The Woman's Bible in 1895, it was a political act (Fiorenza 1994:7) based on her faith and desire that biblical interpretation be inclusive and reflective of the importance of women's spiritual need.

I have no such desire, the church having lost its authority for me by insisting on the Edenic interpretation of Eve's role in the so-called Fall. Eve and all women were cast in perpetual opposition to “god” and his plans for “man”. However, in my work I episodically strain against the backdrop of Bible and Church and the early sense of myself that was shaped - or misshapen - by it .

The exploration of my subject is the product of a feminist consciousness brought about by the interaction between reading, writing, and the making of my art. My early South African work was a personal reflection of my own subjective experiences as a daughter of the patriarchy. At first, I portrayed female figures as eroticised and crucified objects. Then, as if to anaesthetise the terror of this reality, the paintings that followed were pale images of the figure blending into the domestic environment: the housewife neatly pasted down with the wallpaper, or hanging with the laundry to dry.

However my move to America in 1981 would eventually change my focus from the intensely personal to a symbolist vision that questioned notions of belief and scripture in relation to feminist spiritual thinking. Male effigies and imaginings of a pre-patriarchal masculinity informed much of the early New York work. I wrote poetry in my mother tongue, Afrikaans, to still the longing for the Africa that formed me.The writing and images were incorporated in limited edition artist's books, while the drawing and painting explored the images and ideas around a primordial mother goddess.

In time the idea of the divine female became central to my American work, and the focus shifted from being mostly emblematic to becoming mostly figurative.The work is anchored with a point of view both in terms of method and content: I work/excavate towards an image and only later allow its content to be articulated in words. My work was shown in South Africa until 1981 under my, then, married name, Majak Lewis. I reclaimed my maiden name, Bredell, in New York after my marriage ended.




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