Arts festival: Women's toil tops the bill

05 July 2016 - 10:15 By Sean O'Toole

It's that time of year again, when bigwig dramaturges and spiced-nut sellers, cultural apparatchiks and amateur landscape painters all heed the frostbitten call of Grahamstown.The standout exhibitions on the National Arts Festival stage, the last devised by outgoing artistic director Ismail Mohamed, are by women.Trained at the University of Johannesburg, Berlin-based Lerato Shadi's Noka ya Bokamoso is an arresting showcase that includes two video works and a new wall drawing.In Sugar & Salt (2014) we see Shadi licking sugar from her mother's tongue, and her mom licking salt from hers. The work is remarkably tender.But it is Shadi's physical presence in the museum that has got everyone talking.Every day, she comes into the Albany Museum, seats herself on a chair near her artworks and continues crocheting an ever-growing length of red fabric.Shadi doesn't interact with her public while sewing. It lends her labour a quiet solemnity.Celebrated photographer Zanele Muholi has work in a neighbouring gallery. Her exhibition Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail, the dark lioness) is an extraordinary feat.It is composed of two distinct portrait series: Brave Beauties, a 2014 suite of portraits of Miss Gay beauty pageant contestants, and a self-portrait collection after which the exhibition is named.In her self-portraits Muholi wears dark make-up and bends and contorts her body as she pleases. In one photo she wears a crown made of pot scourers. In another she throttles herself. She is often naked.One senses Muholi's abandon as she tumbles into an inner world in these ravishing photos.Muholi's master class in self-portraiture is not entirely matched by Mohau Modisakeng, who premiered his Standard Bank Young Artist Award exhibition Lefa La Ntate (My father's legacy).His show includes a four-screen video of the artist navigating a coal yard. Coal pieces also ring his main sculptural installation, a long table into which six performers have carved a pattern quoted from the R100 note...

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