Siphiliselwe Makhanya checks out a Durban exhibition that explores the evolution of gender stereotypes in art
Nhlanhla Ben Nsusha's mixed-media work Play That Tune My Fohloza reminds me of a scene from a favourite animated Disney film, The Princess and the Frog.
In Nsusha's work, a guitar-playing male figure dances ahead of another, female one. I assume, possibly wrongly, that they are a couple or somehow related.
The male figure's instrument is his only visible load. The female figure, in contrast, carries a suitcase in her left hand, a shopping bag of the kind we Zulus call umhlab'ungehlule in her right, a large sports bag on her head, a baby tied to her back and the hint of another in her belly.
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Umhlab'ungehlule, roughly translated, means "the world has conquered me" - the kind of thing you might say on returning home after failing to make your fortune.
Nsusha's work reminds me of Disney's female protagonist, Tiana, who rows a makeshift raft while her eventual love interest, Naveen, lies back and literally fiddles while she works.
The parallels startle me: two works, worlds apart, depicting essentially the same trope - drudge female labour making male creativity possible. Nsusha's work is one of many in the Beauty and its Beasts exhibition at the Durban Art Gallery that explores the evolution of gender stereotypes in art.
The show was curated by the gallery's Jenny Stretton in collaboration with Jessica Bothma, Carol Brown, Nindya Bucktowar, Zinhle Khumalo, Sinethemba Ngubane, Osmosisliza, Fran Saunders and Swany. They drew from the gallery's own collection as well as borrowed works.
The variety and placement of the works make for an intense, affecting viewing experience. Each work is a world of its own meanings but not all of them are self-contained - commonalities leak across and common themes emerge.
It discomfits me to realise how often the foregrounding of nude female figures in several of the artworks makes me casually complicit in what feels like a violation. In Liza Hugo's Olympia (1996), two women echo each other in a state of undress, while a male stares back at the viewer. He is fully clothed. This happens again in Albert Droesbeke's Marionettes (1928) - a woman in a diaphanous slip is the centre of male attention - they are clothed. Again in Jane Alexander's Woman in a Two-piece (1984).
There are contrasts, too, and humour.
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Photographers Zanele Muholi and David Goldblatt photographed legs. Muholi's Condoms and Feet (2006) shows brown calves and bare feet on beach-y sand, a bouquet of inflated condom-balloons reflected near the limbs. It's almost cheerful. Goldblatt's Joubert Park, Johannesburg (1975) focuses instead on the pale thighs, knees and upper legs peeking out from a skirt, hands clasped in lap. I have seen that pose before, many times, in church. Again, it feels wrong to look.
• 'Beauty and its Beasts' is at the Durban Art Gallery until May 28.
• This article was originally published in The Times.
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