A feminist critique of the concept of home in the work of selected contemporary white South African female artists.
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Date
2011
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Abstract
In this dissertation I analyse and contextualise stereotypical notions associated with the
concept of home, and what that constitutes, in the work of South African artists Antoinette
Murdoch, Bronwen Findlay, Doreen Southwood and Penelope Siopis, each of whom
displays a different perspective of the concept in their artwork. I further consider how these
selected South African artists engage with the dichotomies surrounding issues of home and
the gendered position assigned to women in this area. I address the strategies the selected
artists use in bringing the realm of the private sphere into the public arena and how they
transgress the boundaries of private and public spaces. In addition I consider how concepts
of home are reflected in my own work and how they are informed by a feminist
perspective.
The choice of white female artists as the subject of this research is a conscious one, in that
I wish to avoid an investigation into cross-cultural gendered subjectivities which will
inevitably become entangled with questions of race, politics and culture. As western
feminist thought often tends to ignore the specific experiences of ethnic groups located
outside western cultural experience, my focus on artists whose context is in part shared by
my own is intended to provide an insider perspective.
In the context of this research, 'home' is defined as a traditionally acknowledged place
where woman is identified in relation to domesticity and the family unit. The term 'home' is
therefore partly applicable to a type of domestic environment regardless of its geographic
and cultural associations. Home has been defined as a 'group of persons sharing a home or
living space (whereas) most households consist of one person living alone, a nuclear
family, an extended family or a group of unrelated people' (Scott and Marshall 2005:276).
The home is regarded as a place of security where the most intimate of relationships takes
place, but it is also an arena of complex human relationships associated with domestic,
family, personal and cultural identity. The home is further regarded as a private space and
as being somewhat inaccessible, as opposed to the public domain which is open to scrutiny.
The home houses a corridor of emotion, however, and may often become a place of
entrophy. A subtle shifting and subverting of the conventions which society places upon
women and men to conform to particular behavioural constructs will be deconstructed to
reveal the concept of home as a site where the boundaries between reality and illusion
become blurred.
My own artistic practice is concerned with the deconstruction of the home as an idealised
space and the façade that often conceals a dystopian reality that lurks beneath such
idealisation. I share assumed cultural and class values with the selected artists and will
critique the subject from a personal perspective, in part as a self-narrative. Within the
context of this research, the term 'middle class' is defined as 'the class of society between
the upper and working classes, including business and professional people' (The Oxford
English Dictionary 1994:509).
Description
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.
Keywords
Findlay, Bronwen, 1953-, Southwood, Doreen., Siopis. Penelope, 1953-, Home in art., Women artists--South Africa., Theses--Fine art., Murdoch, Antoinette.