Doctoral Degrees (Visual Arts)
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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Visual Arts) by Author "De Beer, Marlene"
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- ItemA visual and textual re-storying of the diary of Susanna Catharina Smit (1799-1863)(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12) De Beer, Marlene; Van Robbroeck, Lize; Dietrich, Keith; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This doctoral project, which involves a thesis and a body of artworks, is a re-storying of the muted voices of three of my female ancestors: my mother, my grandmother and the Voortrekker woman Susanna Smit. I attempt to give voice, via a re-storying of their archives, to some of the more hidden aspects of their narratives. My objective is to draw attention to a ‘maternal debt’ that has been occluded by patriarchy, and to afford voices to the mute women who served as silent corporeal foils for men. I argue that sublimation, for women, occurs within prescriptive patriarchal cultural and social contexts, which invalidates the accusation that women might be consciously colluding in the maintenance of a phallocentric world order. The aim of this project is to reappraise historical interpretations and cultural ideological representations of these Afrikaner female subjects, and to demonstrate how these women’s seeming collusion with an oppressive and prescriptive patriarchy was largely due to internalisation of their own ascribed inferior positions as women in a male-dominated culture. From a phenomenological and embodied perspective, I explore the tension between objectified female subjects, in their attempt to achieve a form of agency and sublimation, and a patriarchal Western Symbolic. Three-dimensional artworks in porcelain and mixed media, and video (which includes poetry) form the principal method of re-storying my ancestors’ lived experiences. Through my artwork I attempt to create an awareness of the need for a feminine Imaginary and Divine.