Interview: de constructing gender at Live Art, March 2025

Live Art Weekend, (de)Constructing Gender, presented by Working Title, is taking place in Cape Town from Thursday to Saturday (March 13-15, 2025). Curator Carin Bester and some of the creatives give insights into the work:

TCR: Carin, Can you walk us through the programme– (de)Constructing Gender -from inside to outside spaces – and the order? Aimee Pullon is a visual artist – work in the foyer? There is a film by Mamello Makhetha – screened in the theatre? There are performances by Roland du Preez (includes a recording), Grace Storm and Andi Colombo – in the theatre?

Carin Bester: Our Live Art Weekends come together very organically, and we only finalise the exact order and spaces to be used the day before when we do technical. What I can say is that the screening of the film Ore Phelele by Mamello Makhetha will be inside the theatre and we will be moving. Instead of giving the order we rather ask the audience to come with an open mind and a sense of adventure, stepping into the unknown with both the order of events, which spaces are used as well as what to expect from the pieces on offer.

TCR: A urinal has been used on your poster- the work of Aimee Pullon. I immediately thought of Duchamp’s urinal, Fountain 1917.  In the blurb, it says that the piece is titled Aequitas (Pissing Contest) and that a stilettoed figure (a woman) is trying to pee in a space designed for men? You have used it for the poster – it is emblematic of male dominance in art – even if one thinks of the Surrealists who were generally misogynistic. Your thoughts?

CB: I met Aimee last year and we very quickly started talking about art, I asked her to send me a few images of her work and I immediately knew I wanted to include her in this Live Art weekend, her work speaks so much to this theme with so many different layers. When I saw the image of Aequitas (Pissing Contes) I was drawn to it specifically because if the inner dialogue it created for me. Without having read any artist statement where she does say” The figure, assumed to be female from the tall black stilettos” I though a woman at a urinal. Then I realised I was thinking in the boxed construct of gender, assuming woman as if there are only two genders. Man or Woman. Because these stilettos can be worn by many more than just a woman. And the blood can also be there for many different reasons. I loved that it encouraged thinking and questioning my own way of thinking and that’s what I want this weekend to be about, it’s about encouraging dialogue so I knew it would be the right choice not only for including it in the programme but also for the poster, as I hope that even people who do not attend will have some sort of dialogue about the work and the meaning of it, when they see the poster.

TCR: Mamello, insights please into Ore Phelele?

Mamello Makhetha: Ore Phelele is a film about attempting to reach towards letting go of pain. An attempt to release injustice through the body. An attempt to honour life. The film sees me represented as a somewhat spiritual or angelic figure moving in various environments that have a history and an ongoing relationship with sexual violence in our country. These include a magistrate’s court which represents ways that the justice system has failed sexual violence survivors, my bed and bedroom, as an intimate and vulnerable safe space. A post office, which alludes to the site of Uyinene’s death and murder, but also remembers her spirit while she lived. Lastly, an expansive green field cloaked in the night sky, as the site of peace, release, and strength.

I created a movement and gestural language, with the assistance of choreographer, writer, and artist Quinton Manning. The movement works as a vessel and vehicle that sees me journey through from grief to peace. It uses cyclicality, and cycles as an opportunity for the constant revisiting, the repeated making sense of, just the same way we are forced to do so, when another story breaks about another woman or child we have lost. The film is held by the delicate yet haunting score created by Mikyla Emergui.  The film serves to honour, it serves as a remembrance for the lives and losses of victims we have forgotten, that fade in the receding memory of our nation. It asks survivors, myself included, to never stop living, ‘ore phelele’. 

TCR: Roland du Preez, insights please into Haireditary?

Roland du Preez: The most interesting conversations I have about gender are with my mother. I am a non-binary 28-year-old, she is a post-menopausal cisgender woman, yet our experience of shame, conformity, and gender euphoria are almost always spoken about with the same words. Haireditary is a live performance piece accompanied by a recorded conversation between the artist and their mother. The artist speaks about challenging femininity through a queer lens, and their mother discusses the shift in her ties to femininity as a post-menopausal woman.

Onstage, the artist sits in a lime-green gown dotted with flowers (one that their ouma might have worn to her church confirmation) surrounded by grooming supplies: Shaving cream, scissors, deodorant, cotton balls, razor blades, toothpaste, an electric trimmer, and nail polish. While the recorded conversation explores the shame, guilt, and fear that body hair often provokes in femme-presenting people, the live performance has an atmosphere of play. The artist interacts with the grooming tools as an alien would: Innocently, curiously, incorrectly.

Haireditary tries to defuse the anxiety of shaving, to show that play is possible and necessary in such a strict setting. The piece argues that femme-presenting people have been robbed of the freedom of personal expression, and seeks to remedy that by exploring body hair with joy and whimsy.

This piece was developed through the mentorship by Qondiswa James, made possible by Live Art and Working Title.

TCR: Andi Colombo, insights please into Seep?

Andi Colombo: Seep began its life as an interactive storytelling installation where audiences are required to read the script as part of the performance. The work is inspired by the mythology of the washerwoman, borrowed from Celtic legend, and is a re-interpretation, retelling and recontextualisation of this story. It premiered at the 2024 KKNK [Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees. Oudtshoorn], under the Lucky Pakkie programme, where it was nominated for a Kanna Award. Now, at Working Title, Seep has been adapted into a different format, studying similar themes.

Doing research one day, I stumbled upon the mythology of the washerwoman, which is a story found across cultures, most notably in the folklore of Brittany and in Celtic mythology. These figures are shrouded in mystery and often are associated with death and sorrow. The stories vary across different regions, but the common denominator is that all of them involve mythology around women and washing clothes, and mourning. The stories got me thinking about grief, and death, and how we are connected to past and future generations through a long line of sorrow. Similarly, though by necessity, the act of washing clothing connects us, collapsing time and space in soap suds and swirling water. Laundry is personal, political and often gendered. It exists both in the mythological world, and in the present day, and in every time between. In a South African context, laundry is highly political, steeped in racial and class dynamics. From a personal perspective, the systems of laundry are soothing, and when I’m struggling emotionally, I find a degree of comfort in the clean steps of the laundry cycle. But how much of that is socialised as a gendered role? Can we really wash away grief, hang it up to dry and fold it neatly?

Seep aims to examine the gendered nature of the mythology of grief, and to honour the ways history reverberates through time, connecting us to those who came before, both in shared pain and the mundane task of sort, wash, dry and fold.

TCR: Grace Storm, insights please into Un-becoming?

Grace Storm: As part of my MA research in 2020, I was interested in looking at how performative embodied gendered acts can challenge perceptions of gendered expectations of women. These expectations are predominantly ones of beauty and appearance in order to be perceived as a woman. It explores how a conscious awareness of repeated acts through active doing and witnessing or perceiving can challenge and shift understanding and perceptions of the lived bodily experiences of women. It also explores how performativity is not necessarily acknowledged by the subject but is always active.

From this, I worked with participants and gathered groundwork to create this final performance titled “Un-Becoming”. It focuses on the idea that as a woman, we live in spaces that continue to ask of us to ‘be’ a woman.

As young girls, we are exposed to people and society telling us what to wear, what to eat, what to say, how to say it, how to act, when to respond, why we shouldn’t speak, and the list goes on.

In a world such as this, it is important for young women to consider their place and voice in a society that may drown them out. If we can look at ways we have ‘become’ because of others expectations, what does it mean to ‘un’-become? Does it remove our place or identity as woman?

Un-becoming attempts to shed light on the performativity we have adopted in order to be seen as ‘woman’ and interrogates the different ways we exist in the world to prove our ‘womenness’ as opposed to just ‘being’.

Is there a difference? What defines a woman? Is there only one way of expressing our ‘womenness’ and what does it look like for different bodies?

It also places emphasis on our role and responsibility looking in from the outside on how we tend to police women’s bodies and how we should consider looking at it through an alternative lens.

If repeated gendered acts have continued over time, then we should be able to follow the map back to its core in order to ‘un-become’.

TCR: Carin, Three of the four creatives – from what I gather are sis women and identify as sis women. Was it a conscious decision to veer away from the male gaze in curating this programme?

CB: As a curator I definitely try to give equal opportunity to all, but many people also do know that I am very vocal in my support for women and the queer community, and that I will do what I can to help create opportunity for them. But this does not mean I will not include sis men. But there were no suitable applications for this programme. 

TCR: You say: “In a country grappling with high rates of gender-based violence and deeply ingrained patriarchal norms, this event offers a space to critique, reflect, and reimagine. By addressing the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals, the pressures placed on men to suppress vulnerability, and the pervasive inequalities faced by women, (de)Constructing Gender shines a light on the urgent need for dialogue and change.” Anything else to add about the programme?

CB: I have been working with themes of GBVF for many years now and it’s a subject very close to my heart, so when I started with Live Art Weekends, I knew that a theme like this would be included. The reality of GBVF in our country is beyond words at this point in time, and the shocking treatment of the queer community around the world right now should make us all want to speak up. This idea of two genders only is overly simplistic and rooted in a patriarchal religious mind-set. Human beings are fluid, we do not belong in a construct of one or the other only. We are not that simple.

✳ Featured image: Andi Colombo’s Seep which will be presented at Live Art Weekend, (de)Constructing Gender in the Baxter Masambe, Cape Town, March 13-15, 2025. Photo by Stephanie Gericke.