Main Gallery

Majak Bredell  - Interconnections

13 May to 3 June 2023
 
“My latest body of work approaches our relationship to, dependence on, and interconnections with the earth and the natural world through the lens of eco-feminism’s regard of the earth as a living body” renowned artist Majak Bredell says of this exhibition.
 
Bredell was born in Kroonstad.  In 1981 she emigrated to New York with her now ex-husband and two young children.  After living and working in New York for 23 years the artist returned to South Africa in 2004 to build a studio where she lives on the side of the Drakensberg in Limpopo. 
 
Since her return to South Africa, she produced several extensive bodies of work that look at established mythology from a feminist perspective:
 
‘Alter Images 1 and 2’ - in which the Black Madonna and the dark Goddesses are sistered and remembered.
‘Roll Call’ — a twenty-meter-long paper scroll populated with 52 life-sized figures, a vindication of the lives and bodies that were broken and burned during the many centuries of the European Witch Persecutions.
‘Codex Magdalene+’ — towards a new iconography and re-imaging the mythology and legends of Mary Magdalene.
 
These works were exhibited at the Association of Arts Pretoria; UJ Art Gallery; the White River Gallery in Mpumalanga; the Polokwane Art Museum in Limpopo, each accompanied by a comprehensive full-colour catalogue.
 
Recently, in 2020-21 a retrospective exhibition curated by Elfriede Dreyer, ‘Majak Bredell - The New York Years, 1981 – 2003” (with catalogue) was exhibited simultaneously at the Pretoria Art Museum and the Association of Arts Pretoria.