The exhibition gets its title from political scientist Joseph Nye's term coined in the late 1980s. In Nye's conception, soft power was the strategic ability of nation states to co-opt rather than coerce. "In this exhibition, we once again extend Nye’s framing of soft power to explore the capacity of women’s creative modalities to connect, challenge, reclaim, and hold our responses to self and other in powerful and authentic ways," reads an excerpt from the curatorial statement.
For Soft Power, Too, five artists employ unusual, tactile, and gendered materials that play between the conceptual spaces of 'soft' and 'hard'. For instance, perceived boundaries between painting and weaving or sculpture and crafting are challenged. The artists give shape in beautifully varied ways to "women's work", broadly defined, and to concepts surrounding embodiment. Given the rise of 'hard power' in global geopolitics, this exhibition raises questions around the role of soft power and how this can shape dynamics related to individuals, communities, and the state in a different way.
Photo: Supplied.
Known for her painting and large-scale three-dimensional works made from massive sheets of crumpled metal welded together, Hedwig Barry's work for Soft Power, Too are a series of much smaller, intimately painted 'crumples' exploring the relationship between destruction and preservation, force and form.
The experiences of women are central to the worlds conceived in Bev Butkow's art. She expands the possibilities of weaving through processes of making and unmaking; a metaphor for Butkow's own experience of occupying different and at times conflicting roles simultaneously.
Aneesah Girie, meanwhile, draws her inspiration from the cultural practices surrounding her identity as a Muslim woman in South Africa. She's particularly interested in the politics and meanings associated with wearing a hijab and, in her work, explores the tensions between her materials and metaphorical hardness and softness.
Princia Matungulu’s practice is a combination of weaving, sculpture, and storytelling
related to her Congolese BaLuba heritage. Her work records personal and imagined histories, as she navigates her place in South Africa's social landscape.
Lastly, vulnerability and intimacy are the concentration of Hannah Macfarlane's work. Using wool and wet felting, her embodied practice is both tactile and time-consuming, and physically vigorous yet meditative. Her sculptures reflect strategies of conscious care and play with the notion of "being" rather than "knowing".
Soft Power, Too shows at Guns & Rain gallery in Parkhurst until Tue, Sep 17.
