Published 05 August 2025 in Press
Artthrob - Reviews
Ilené Bothma Featured in Tales of Nurture: Motherhood – Paradox and Duality at the Iziko South African National Gallery by Mamelodi Marakalala
Artthrob - Reviews
Published 22 July 2025
Grace Cross, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (2019)
In ‘Motherhood – Paradox and Duality’, currently showing at the Iziko South African National Gallery, over seventy artworks created through an assortment of media and across different periods open the door to a resonant understanding of the state of motherhood and its intricacies. Visitors are greeted with a piece of advice, or perhaps a demand, on both sides of the gallery’s entrance in the form of Ed Young’s reprised mural CALL YOUR MOTHER (2025), whose capitalised white text and black background become another symbol of the contrasts in maternity that this showcase underscores. It also serves as a gentle nudge to the audience about the magnitude of being or experiencing motherhood. The show was curated by Andrea Lewis, Curator of Prints and Drawings at Iziko, after returning from her second maternity leave and while negotiating her career and newly expanded family life.
Reflecting on the “rare and meaningful opportunity to merge these two seemingly separate worlds within a shared space”, Lewis explores the reality of many women. As they stand facing a desire to become ever-present caregivers to their children, they must also return to the workforce that looms just behind them. One of the works that demonstrates this is Grace Cross’ The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (2019), which depicts a woman sitting on a two-person sofa expressing breast milk while a laptop sits open beside her. She faces the viewer while her baby reaches out for her from the left corner of the room. A grey cable connected to the laptop, the white cords of each breast pump, and red threads from a yarn underneath the sofa are tangled on the floor as a symbol of how mothers are stretched across the economic, biological, and psychological elements of their lives in their role. Moreover, with the overall imagery of the painting, we are reminded of how mothering has changed throughout the years.
Ilené Bothma, The Mother’s Lament (2019). Image sourced from artist’s portfolio.
Each of the assembled works places our focus on the distinct parts of womanhood that emphasise their dedication as mothers and the purposeful sacrifices of motherhood. The use of a mother’s body is highlighted in works that foreground the abdominal area or uterus, upper limbs, and breasts. The preoccupation of her mind with her obligations is symbolised in the works that depict or present a woman occupying space with her child on her or within view. The idea of how a woman’s life transforms in ripples from the point of gestation to postnatal care is reflected, for one, in the unclothed pale woman standing in a subtle yet bold darkness as she breastfeeds her infant while a black lace covers them – depicted in Ilené Bothma’s The Mother’s Lament (2019). The darkness becomes a remark on how motherhood creates a world that is utterly about the mother and her child, on how she redirects her focus and realises an endless love from within herself.
Usha Seejarim, Soft Power (2025). Image sourced from Southern Guild.
Beyond their bodies and minds, mothers also rely on tools and resources in their practice of child-rearing. Soft Power (2025), by Usha Seejarim, is a large installation of stacked grass brooms forming a bracket doorway. These brooms, which were originally created to be sustainable cleaning objects for outdoor areas, have transcended into being valued as symbols of feminine domesticity. On one hand, they can be viewed as an artistic expression of the solidity of motherhood. They have collectively taken the form of a structure that towers over people, symbolising a dynamic power inherent in femininity and women’s human capabilities. On the other hand, the brooms also unravel the politics and traditions that confine femininity to external gender expectations. This reminds us of the thin line between a mother’s passionate love and a woman’s culturally allotted obligations, her own desire to nurture and the world’s need for her to serve, a celebration of her motherhood and the erasure of her identity and loss of her sense of self.
Rose Altarpiece (2005) by Keiskamma Art Project. Image sourced from Liz at Lancaster Guesthouse
The showcase was carefully constructed with the South African socio-political landscape in mind. Thus, exploring the manifold essences of motherhood with a sensitivity towards how it was and will continue to be moulded by forces systematic and external to the mother herself – history and colonisation, gender inequality, race and culture, economic strife, health and other humanitarian crises. An artwork that represents this dynamic of how mother-child relationships are anchored and impacted by national and global systems and circumstances is the Keiskamma Art Project’s Rose Altarpiece (2005). The mixed-media work itself was created in the dire context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and depicts a mother holding a toddler at her side as two angels fly above them. It was created in the style of Martin Schongauer’s Madonna of the Rose Bower (1473). It is made with varying materials that include yellow and orange fabrics forming a twilight, the checkered dishcloth familiar to many South African households forming part of the woman’s clothing, photographic fragments of project member Nokwanda Makubalo and the child she adopted giving a face to the subjects, crafted red roses, and stitching, among many other things. Each material is connected with another to bring to life the work’s harmonious composition. The work allows for a dialogue between spirituality and notions of motherhood.
From the entrance to the very last work we see, ‘Motherhood – Paradox and Duality’ engages its audience with a myriad of considerations on the subject of motherhood. The graphic design element of mirroring “mother” and “HOOD” in the exhibition title represents the convergence of the contradicting aspects that emerge with being a mother or contemplating motherhood. The diversity of the works, in media and form, included in the exhibition demonstrates how every woman will have their unique intimate moments as mothers and their personal history with the constitution of motherhood. Yet, their collective display underscores that it is a shared, and indeed human, experience.
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