Women From South Africa

"I am not religious but I pray through my work to unknown devils and gods. I look for my soul in colors and empty my being through parables of rusted, lost metal doors."

"“An investigation of light and shadow, of nature, our behaviors, the conscious and the subconscious, connection and dissonance, the outside world and the inside world, the phases of the moon from fullness to absence, creativity and receptivity, sound and silence. An interdependence of the two.”"

"Her work is informed by her childhood experience growing up in Apartheid and addresses social struggles of oppressed peoples around the world. Working with gestural brush strokes and thin washes of paint, her works have a distinctly transparent appearance that emphasizes their materiality and intimate subject matter."

"” No painting can exist without the tension of what it figures and what it concretely consists of the pleasure of what it could mean and the pain of what it's not.”"

"Painting doesn't freeze time. It circulates and recycles time like a wheel that turns. Those who were first might well be last.""

"Painting is a very slow art. It doesn't travel with the speed of a light. That's why dead painters shine so bright"

"I don't go to psychiatrist. I don't go to a gym. I run away from my accountant, I run away from my dentist. They all supposed to help you, but i like to stay in bed where I have a chance to reflect, like Rossellini"

"My best works are erotic displays of mental confusions (with intrusions of irrelevant information)"

"I have always been interested in how you can depict suffering without being heavy-handed"

"It seems to me however that its greatest contribution is in giving us art as another language to understand and express ourselves, especially during this time when the conventional political discourse is severely limited. And it’s not all serious, thank goodness. Humour, irony and sly jokes abound in many of the works that cast a jaundiced eye on our contemporary leaders and problems."

"Populism and opportunism are the order of the day and all manner of insincerities abound – none of which bring us any closer to finding ways to solve the real problems of the day – poverty, hunger, unemployment, our lack of solidarity, community and ethics, the need for better systems of accountability and governance."

"If contemporary art is defined as ‘art that is created now’, then the Spier Contemporary is the visual and aural barometer of what it is like to live in South Africa in 2010."

"What she passed on to me – in fact, it was what I had always experienced of her – was her sense of things."

"I will remember her for always putting beauty and harmony above anything else. That remains a strong memory."

"We are grateful for her rich life and for the time she always spent with other people."

"I work at night because the night doesn't have shadows."

"We haven't experimented enough to demonstrate success. Bold projects can challenge outdated notions and inspire others to imagine cities built on innovation and inclusivity."

"Social housing and low-cost housing are often seen as lowly enterprises, but I want the government and society to understand their immense potential to transform communities and lives."

"There are many assumptions about housing preferences, like 'Africans don't prefer multi-story living.' I reject this. We need to experiment and showcase successful designs that challenge such misconceptions."

"Alternative building technologies are rich with possibilities. I want architects to realize their potential to create beautiful, sustainable homes within compact spaces, shaping the foundation of our future cities."

"I believe that the need for low-cost housing should never equate to creating oppressive or unattractive spaces. We must shift away from the typical township designs and envision developments that uplift communities."

"“A recycler at heart, Breitz scavenges the overwhelming remains of popular visual culture, applies a highly reductive editing process to them and ends up with another – and more primary – set of materials. Like the crushed Coke can, the final product is a mere sliver of its former self: distinct enough to be recognisable and yet so distorted that we balk at the memory of its original form and our pleasure in using it. Yet Breitz’s work, however simple in its execution, is far from simplistic.""

"“While appearing to subscribe to minimalist strategies, Breitz on the other hand owes much to pop. Her work brings the sparse conceptual idiom of the former to bear on the colourful realm of the latter. From the perspective of art history, her method appears as a unique, if not cacophonous, marriage of Sol LeWitt’s formulaic wall-drawings to Warhol’s production line of silk-screened Marilyn Monroes, freshly cooing out of the Factory.”"

"“Certain situations in life push you toward extreme decisions,”"

"“We were drawn to her nuanced and delicate work at the sixth edition of the Marrakech Biennale last year and are thrilled by working with her this year in Rotterdam to place a bookend to our Para | Fictions series.”"

"Her work revolves around the process of creation, rather than a belief in research or a particular canon. Simply put, she learns what the piece will be by making it."

"“What struck us was the way in which Dineo managed to make work that was very personal, intimate even, but did so with very common materials.”"

"Real life requires one to perform many adjectives (for example being woman/happy/doctor/young/in love/friend/older sister....there are varying conventions that dictate how certain adjectives are activated), and for people or objects to participate in the world, i guess they have to perform--well, i guess we make objects perform--through their use, their place in language. i am interested in objects performing passively...alluding in a very scattered way to disparate things, somehow dancing their colours, textures, thingness with other things...and their thingnesses too."

"Life itself is quite ‘kaleidoscopic’ and surreal. Perhaps as an artist or a ‘self,’ it is an assemblage of possibilities, probabilities and the real as more strange than the fiction. The fictions also are too heavy."

"“My focus is to separate what has created the self [and] what is the representation of personality and group identity.”"

"“I think everybody is a post-colonial artist; we’re all living in post-colonial societies.”"

"“ ...her extraordinary versatility in whatever medium she chooses, be it paint, clay, wood or glass projects her ability yo meld the cerebral with the emotional and the visual .....”"

""Bekker’s diverse artworks capture metaphorically her passion for transcending boundaries and revealing both the strength and fragility of the human condition.”"

"“Myfanwy Bekker, the artist, the woman, is a source of light. She uses pencil and paintbrush with more immediacy and ease than most use words to tell the story of their lives. Her art is lyrical and soulful. There is beauty and delight, while also commenting on the severity of our human condition. Myfanwy’s experiences of South Africa, Texas, New Mexico and California, the landscape of the earth and the hearts and minds of each place’s inhabitants are all blended in her paintings...”"

"“Myfanwy Bekker’s work has been as consistent and heart-felt as any artist I have ever known. In the twenty four years I have known her, she has continually included observations on her surroundings, her South African heritage and her love of nature in every artistic endeavour. She is spontaneous in her application of paint, giving her images a soul - filled with emotion. Her understanding of materials makes it easy for her to translate ideas into paintings or sculptural work that capture the sentiment she wants to convey. She often includes neon in organic configurations that intertwine with clay, twigs, actual canvas or other structural elements that she has painted. Myfanwy’s South African background is ever-present in her work. Her love of the country and her upbringing are inescapable trademarks of this wonderful artist!”"

""We, as artists, go along, searching for our own truth and so our collective creativity becomes our personal and cultural history. We are simply visual communicators.”"

"Just as there are many ideas and concepts one has to share, so there are many media and forms to choose as vehicles. It’s sort of like a visual conversation, different audiences, different languages, different places. One decides upon the most efficient and pleasing ‘fit’."

"I am naturally drawn to light - like a plant I will inadvertently find myself turned towards the light. I have always done this, even as a child. Hopefully I will continue to do this and perhaps one day simply disappear in a flash of light.”"

"With the use of the organic juxtaposed with the hard edge, I want the pieces to balance and create their own zing .... and comfort me."

"It has always been the same refrain, really, the struggle to meld two selves, two deep senses of awareness, to make an acceptably sane harmony of the two (or three or four ...)"

"I chose to force myself to look here at what it means to be a white South African woman artist in America and such far flung places for thirty odd years."

"“In this show I want to talk about light and a type of fine tensile strength, perhaps a feminine strength, seductive but tough.""

"I am growing up on stage and I’m just in the faces of people, I can’t do anything else like any other young girl my age, it was very challenging but I got used to it."

"Knowing very well what you want and why you are here, why you doing what you doing, the purpose ... Humble yourself and give God the glory and let him lead you until you reach your destination, that is how I kept myself (disciplined)."

"My purpose is to teach people where I come from. It’s been a lesson to me that I had to reach out and tell people that it’s not over until God says so..."

"I don’t have friends unfortunately. My friends are my family because I believe those are the safest friends."

"When I am on stage something takes over. I become that excited little girl again, who is happy to see people singing and jumping, saying “Oh, they love me,” and at least someone loves me. That child in me comes out and the stage for me is a very nice playground that heals my heart while praising God."

"Gospel music is big all over the world. There is no genre that is bigger than gospel. If you go to Malawi or Congo, you’ll find another Rebecca Malope."

"Couldn’t agree more… equality is one of the founding values of the Constitution… and we will never be able to heal the wounds… which are still very raw [unless] we… address substantive inequality in all spheres."

"My reasons are there, its a complex issue but there was sufficient grounds that the two acts should be read together."