Heywood, Mark (2023) The irrepressible force within us — conjuring a tale of two dances. Daily Maverick. 7 July 2023.
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Jamal, Ashraf (2020) Tomorrow There Will Be More Of Us: The Materiality of South Africa’s Stellenbosch Triennale. Contemporary And. 27 March 2020.
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Zietsman, Gabi (2020) Stellenbosch’s – and SA’s – social tensions reflected in Triennale art exhibits. News24. 10 Feb 2020. Available here
ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images: A woman visits the art installation ‘Giant Walk-In Vagina’ installed at a former women’s prison by artist Reshma Chhiba in Johannesburg on August 27, 2013. Continue reading “REVIEWS: Reshma Chhiba”
Screaming, walk-in vagina at a former women’s prison
AFP news agency, 30 August 2013
A walk-in vagina has been installed at Johannesburg’s old women’s jail, to celebrate women’s month. Visitors are invited to enter the art work to a soundtrack of screaming and laughter, which represents the Hindu Goddess Kali.
Chhiba, R. (2017) The two talking yonis : the use of Hindu iconography in conversations of race, identity, politics and womanhood within contemporary South African art. Nidan : International Journal for Indian Studies, Volume 2 Number 2, pp. 44 – 60
This article looks at the use of Hindu iconography within South African visual art practice and its relation to race, identity, politics and womanhood in the work of Reshma Chhiba. It draws primarily on work from the 2013 exhibition entitled The Two Talking Yonis: Reshma Chhiba in conversation with Nontobeko Ntombela, and discusses Chhiba’s use of the image of the goddess Kali, the concept of yoni, the use of Bharatanatyam and understandings of feminine energy in relation to womanhood. It also threads a narrative of Chhiba’s ancestry through a poetic description of her grandmother’s journey from India to South Africa, and the embodiment of Kali as a form of defiance not only in her work, but also in her grandmother. https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-c195dbc56
Bharatanatyam Choreography and Performance by/with Reshma Chhiba
Bhūmi | Earth, performed by the Sarvavidya Dance Ensemble, 2023, The Lesedi at Joburg Theatre
ShrEe – I am more than just my body – Gandhi Hall, Lenasia, Johannesburg (Poster)
SHrEe: I am more than just my body
8 October 2017, Gandhi Hall, Lenasia, Johannesburg
“SHrEe, the latest production by Sarvavidya Natyaalaya (SVN) is an unravelling nnd narrative thread of current social issues faced by women in contemporary South Africa. With the sub-theme of I am more than just my body, SHrEe takes its audience back to the time of the Mahabharata and the infamous moment of the disrobing of Draupadi. Threading into this narrative it moves to the present moment, and uses spoken word and contemporary dance movement to retell stories of violence and violation against women. The production slowly unpacks the various emotional stages that women, who have experienced some form of violation or abuse, go through. SHrEe aims to reveal the primal force within these women, the goddess in various stages of being, in various stages of womanhood. From the ferocious rage of the violated woman (Kali), to collective teaching, learning and fighting, where words and voice are weapons (Saraswati), to the ironies of how society treats women, whether married or widowed (Lakshmi) and finally it moves to the claiming back of space, of goddess/woman in a state of equilibrium, who is neither less nor greater than her male counterpart (Ardhanareswara). ShrEe gives space to female voices who claim their emotional, physical and spiritual power back. “In a country where femicide and rape culture are so rife that it has become a norm, this production aims to bring these narratives and discussions into the public domain through the use of dance” (Chhiba, 2017). Abuse and violation should never be acceptable, therefore I am more than just my body speaks to many variations of abuse but also allows for empowered voices to be heard.”
From www.sarvavidya.co.za
22-25 June 2018, Michaelis Galleries, University of Cape Town 31-37 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town Opening Hours: Tuesday – Friday, 11- 4pm Contact Nkule Mabaso on 021 650 7170 for more information
The exhibition Re-membering: Memory, Intimacy, Archive features works by South African artists Reshma Chhiba, Sharlene Khan and Jordache A. Ellapen from their projects titled Kali (2008) and The Two Talking Yonis (2013); When the Moon Waxes Red (2016); and Queering the Archive: Brown Bodies in Ecstasy (2016) respectively. In these projects, through the lens of the ‘Indian’ experience, these artists explore and unsettle notions of memory, race, class, gender, and sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa and comment on the nuances and complexities of everyday life in South Africa. In Chhiba’s works, the Indian goddess Kāli is a central starting point where particular reference is made to her iconography and mythology. For her series, Khan works with different visual media like video-art, digital photography, and needle-lace to produce “visual textured narratives”, which narrate the difficult circumstances experienced by migratory women. Ellapen engages black and white archival studio photographs and digital photographs to produce digital “visual assemblages” that disrupts the heteronormative logics of family, community, and nation. Their works jointly speak to everyday experiences and performativities of identities shaped through the tensions of cultural migrations, familial love, loss and mythologies that are too often simplistically and sentimentally rendered. These entanglements add richness to a segment of South African history that is still lacking.
Re-membering Lunchtime Lecture, UCT 25 July 2018
Lunchtime lecture by Sharlene Khan and Reshma Chhiba on their exhibition with Jordache Ellapen “Re-membering: Memory, Intimacy, Archive” held at the University of Cape Town, 25 July 2018
Press articles and interviews featuring Senzeni Marasela
Khan, S. (2017) Under the influence of … ‘Covering Sarah’: exorcising the trauma of colonialism and racism. The Conversation, 9 March.
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