In Mother. Monster. Stitch., South African artist Hannalie Taute transforms the family portrait into a site of rebellion and repair. Working with discarded rubber, thread, and vintage photographs, she pierces and re-stitches domestic mythologies. Curated by Karolien van Zyl, the exhibition reveals the monstrous feminine not as horror but vitality – a tactile language of humour, resistance, and becoming.
Working with discarded rubber, thread, and vintage photographs, Taute rewrites domestic mythologies one puncture at a time. Her embroidered figures – wives, mothers, and daughters – oscillate between tenderness and menace, humour and unease. The embroidery turns familiar rituals of respectability inside out; masks grin too wide and flowers bloom where they shouldn’t.
Mother. Monster. Stitch. reimagines the monstrous feminine not as fear, but as vitality – a language of becoming that insists on the power of imperfection and the intelligence of the hand.