Browsing by Author "Steyn, Christine"

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    After birth : abjection and maternal subjectivity in Svea Josephy's "Confinement"
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013-12) Steyn, Christine; Van Robbroeck, Lize; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this thesis I investigate the radical reframing of maternal representation in the photographic series by Cape Town-based artist Svea Josephy (b. 1969), entitled Confinement 2005-ongoing. Using Julia Kristeva’s theorisation of the maternal body’s relation to abjection, as well as its imperative to the remodelling of the relationship between the corporeal and the cultural, I explore how Josephy’s images explicitly engage with the Kristevan abject in order to disrupt cultural inscriptions of maternity and ‘motherhood’. I contend that Confinement situates Josephy’s experience of ‘becoming-mother’ against the dominant discourses of maternity and birth, and thereby uses the maternal subject as a means to interrogate broader issues of gender and identity.
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    Reconfiguring motherhood: maternal temporality in the work of four South African visual artists
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Steyn, Christine; Van Robbroeck, Lize ; Viljoen, Stella; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this study, I examine the visual reframing of mothering by four South African women artists whose projects conceptualise maternal subjectivity through the bodily and psychological experiences of pregnancy, birth and mothering. The principle thesis of my research is that the selected artists’ engagement with maternal subjectivity can be addressed through an exploration of the maternal body’s ability to disrupt conventional experiences of time. Presenting an alternative discourse of maternal embodiment, the artworks offer ways to consider how rethinking maternity might reformulate our experience and thinking about lived time as that which is dynamic, relational and, at times, conflicting, revealing the intrinsic intra-activity of being.