Uncanny Stories Exhibition, Unisa (December 2021) : Soft Targets Series

Abstract

My `Soft Targets’ series of works aim to protest against South Africa’s harrowing levels of gender-based violence. Intimate partner violence in domestic spaces is suggested across a set of eleven prints, of which seven female vests form a virtual `shooting range’ on raw wooden coat hangers, each emblazoned with printed targets. The challenge was to radically expand own modes of artistic expression, and to engage with the broad discourse of postmodernist feminism. The artworks comment on how we have wilfully constituted the gender debate locally by our support of a dominant patriarchal culture locally. The seven printed vests suggest the original wearers were women from diverse walks of life - all deeply affected by gender-based violence. I materialise this by making use of clothing linked to different age groups.

To embody a sense of female universalism, I selected from a second-hand shop a set of previously worn camisole garments to print my images on, indicating fabric worn close to the skin. To address the question of age I chose a range of pink shades: from innocent strawberry pink, associated with youth, to a more vibrant deep pink with a warmly sexual hue and up to the seventh, faded pink vest which is reminiscent of age and being worn out and tired.

The emblem of a shooting target (with numbers in the fourth target) signifies the cold precision with which people harm their beloved partners. The sheer force involved is ironically at odds with the fragile, unprotected female form. The softness of the fabric enforces this aspect. Consider that some garments once belonged to a female who has possibly passed on. One of the printed garments belongs to me, so that I am part of the brutal line-up of targeted bodies.

Exhibiting the used undergarments draws attention to the revelation of something private, with the direct urgency to as a gender activist reminds local audiences of the spate of gender violence. Target practice with symmetrical targets is used by gun shooting ranges to sharpen shooting skills. Hitting the target in the most vulnerable area earns the shooter a higher score. Apart from geometric targets, targets commonly feature stylised silhouettes of humans, and even specifically females. The Baker Targets website includes a target of Evil Emma the zombie (Baker), as if justifying the shooting. Local men routinely brag about sexual prowess with partners by saying they scored with the female on a date. In a recent talk, Genevieve Jones warned about the ways in which our society indulges in sexist jokes which undermine female worth – relegating them to being objects targeted for various forms of abuse (Jones 2021).

I used a drypoint etching technique to create a set of four circular Perspex blocks. The line quality made by my raw needle strokes into the plastic block which cannot be deleted and scratched out in rough strokes, suggests the indelible scars left in deep red, dry blood-like lines. My restricted palette offers a tactile reminder of gender violence.

My use of domestic objects such as bare coat hangers to display undergarments, links up with the poignant bars of sunlight soap employed by Andrea Walters in her ’Over my dead body’ ( 2022) exhibition . The mouths and names of silenced women are sculpted in bars of sunlight soap, victims of intimate partner violence– in similar fashion, my virtual ‘shooting range’ of seven well-worn garments exhibited on hangers silently protests the irreparable bodily harm. Lungiswa Gqunta uses domestic settings and simple household objects such as floor scrubbing brushes, with pink walls against which to exhibit her works, and barbed wire for a clothes line (2018). My own use of a single deep colour across the series of eleven works, embodies the deathly silence as outcome of domestic violence, in a personal language of expressively uneven scratches.

Thematically my work link to the chilling monochrome portraits of the living and the dead by Marlene Dumas (Measuring your grave,). My use of monochrome works a similar understated cumulative impact, Although my work forms part of a public outcry about gender violence, I find that my particular combination of images, materials and technical execution makes a unique statement, coming from a painful private reflection.