Welcome to Image & Text (ISSN online: 2617-3255), an online and open-access journal for the study of visual culture published by the School of the Arts, University of Pretoria. Image & Text is a multi- and interdisciplinary journal for visual culture that publishes research articles, book reviews, exhibition reviews, as well as conference reports. It is accredited by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and indexed on African Journal Archive, Social Sciences and Humanities (excl. T&F) Sabinet, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and The Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) SA. As of 2019, the journal publishes one issue each year on a continuous basis, i.e., articles are published online when ready for publication. Unless otherwise noted on the website, Image & Text welcomes article submissions at any time. No article processing charges (APCs) are levied. Important notes for the submission of manuscripts: Please read our Editorial Policy before you submit your manuscript. Image & Text uses the OJS online submission system. You need to register on the site to start the online submission process. Please carefully read the Author Guidelines on how to submit a manuscript. To ensure blind review, you must remove the author’s name in Microsoft Word, found in the File menu. If there are multiple authors, the lead author should create an account and submit the manuscript. Please submit a cover letter, your full manuscript, and the Publishing Agreement. All submissions must adhere to the Author Guidelines. Your submission will be returned without review if you do not follow the submission guidelines. Archive of back issues
A voice for the voiceless: Diane Victor's representation of migrant women in Suie et cendre (Soot and ashes) (2024-2025)
Diane Victor is a white female South African artist who, through her work, has stood up for victims of abuse, such as domestic violence and atrocities, which arguably, most consistently affect the lives of women. Victor’s exhibition Suie et cendre (Soot and ashes) (2024-2025, LAAC Gallery, Dunkirk, France) responds to the plight of displaced francophone women from Africa and Iran residing in Dunkirk. The ongoing global news coverage of the ‘migrant problem’ has resulted in many extreme views about migrants, but Victor engaged with these women directly through a photovoice project aligning with the current decolonial feminist ethos to grant agency and voice to migrants themselves. This article analyses selected examples from the LAAC exhibition to show how close engagement with the migrants has influenced Victor’s working method and iconography. I argue that Victor’s photovoice project provides a platform for marginalised and suppressed voices to be heard, suggesting that their further exploitation is avoided by employing metaphorical imagery, created with ash and smoke, that responds to their stories with compassion and sensitivity. Furthermore, I suggest that the mythical aspects of Victor’s drawings, where meaning resides as much in material and method as in her iconography, encourage an empathic response in viewers.
Zoë Modiga’s SINENKANI (2020): A Womanist exploration of contemporary South African Afrosurrealism and Zulu identity
Stereotypical and sexualised representations of Black women’s bodies have long been scrutinised in academic literature. The presentation of Black women in hip-hop videos, in particular, in both an international and South African context, has been hypersexualised and typified. Scholars in western feminism and Black feminism have demonstrated how Black women musicians have challenged one-dimensional portrayals of Black women by taking ownership of their sexuality and rebranding stereotypical language and images with more empowered messages. Less examined in current literature on the representation of Black women in music videos is how Black African women musicians use music videos to exercise creative control in their self-expression. In this article, we use a Womanist perspective to interpret South African artist Zoë Modiga’s SINENKANI (2022) music video. We argue that in SINENKANI, Modiga engages in a Womanist gaze, combining elements of Afrosurrealism and Zulu indigenous culture to create an empowered intra-communal perspective. We argue that far from just countering stereotypical representations of Black women, Modiga creatively constructs a complex identity of Zulu African womanhood which can only be fully understood intrasubjectively.
Transnational affect and gender-based violence in Arizona, CY (2024)
Arizona, CY (2024) blends original poetry and photography to forge narrative and visual connections between Arizona and Cyprus. Poems like After the raid, Where are you?, Emine, and Ledger illuminate real-life stories of trauma, exploitation, and gender-based violence (GBV) against women, exploring the intimate and structural dimensions of these experiences. The visual imagery – arid landscapes and resilient flora – symbolise the damage and survival from the shared histories of environmental devastation, interethnic tensions, and social injustice across these regions. Grounded in transnational feminism, this article examines how colonial legacies, migration, and economic disparities contribute to the perpetuation of GBV as a global phenomenon. Drawing on affect theory, trauma studies, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s nomadic sensibility, we emphasise the work’s focus on resilience, empathy, and interconnectedness. Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘sticky’ emotions, as well as Elizabeth A. Povinelli’s theories of abandonment and economies of value, provide frameworks for understanding how Arizona, CY fosters transnational solidarity by creating therapeutic social links and affective experiences. By respecting cultural specificity while challenging patriarchal structures at large, Arizona, CY highlights the transformative potential of empathy and rhizomatic thinking in addressing GBV. The work ultimately acts as a feminist praxis for fostering solidarity and change across borders and contexts.
Breaking the silent legacies of war: Exploring transnational feminist art activisms and conflict-related gender-based violence
Creative arts are vital in helping to raise awareness of the ongoing phenomenon known as “rape as weapon of war”, which has been described by the United Nations (2024a) as one of the ‘greatest silences’ that ‘continues to be chronically underreported’, as sexual violence is systematically encouraged and tolerated during conflicts. In this article, I explore two installations that expose conflict-related gender-based violence to international audiences and advocate for the justice of women’s rights to a life free of violence: Alketa Jhafa Mripa’s Thinking of you (2015), first displayed in Kosovo’s football stadium, and Patricia Cronin’s Shrine for girls (2015), initially presented at the 56th Venice Biennale. By exploring artworks from different locations and different legacies of war, I argue for art’s vital role in giving voice to the greatest s ilence o ccurring during armed conflicts.
Glass art can uncover multiple visions of reality and hidden narratives that other mediums are rarely capable of. The Artefacts exhibition, held at the Pretoria Art Museum from 26 July 2025 to 31 August, examined these hidden narratives and the difference between the public and private spheres through carefully curated glass installations. Lothar Böttcher and Caitlin Greenberg drew visitors in by mixing glass with other mediums in unique ways to encourage conversations around mass media and quiet resilience. This review investigates how visitors were compelled to engage with their own imagination and past experiences to interpret the works displayed and contemplate their meanings.
Lighting up resistance: Dalit Women Fight projections and the power of ambient activism
This article highlights the transformative potential of projection activism in sparking feminist discourse and advocating for equity, emphasising its role in occupying and redefining public spaces to challenge and dismantle oppressive structures. Using as a case study the Dalit Women Fight projections (2015) on the Brooklyn Bridge and on the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations building in New York, curated by the US-based activist collective The Illuminator, the article illustrates the potent role of ambient activism in a ddressing g ender-based v iolence a nd a dvocating for feminist equity. By occupying public spaces with powerful visual narratives, the projections serve as a catalyst for public discourse on feminism, particularly spotlighting the pervasive issue of caste-based sexual violence against Dalit women in India. Therefore, this article aims to delve into how projection activism, by showcasing political content outside institutionalised actions, transforms spaces into vibrant arenas of protest. Here, the built environment itself becomes a dynamic participant in the collective dissent, turning ordinary urban landscapes into powerful stages for social and political expression.
Weaving resistance: Feminist embroidery as a political, affective, and artistic practice within the struggle against feminicides in Mexico City
In Mexico, an average of 11 women are murdered every day as victims of feminicide, making gender-based violence an urgent and pervasive crisis. In response to this extreme context of violence, feminist activists have developed creative, embodied forms of resistance and collective healing. One such practice is el bordado (embroidery), which holds a long tradition in feminist protest across Latin America. In this article, I explore the multiple and layered meanings of bordado in feminist activism, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork – including participant observation, field notes and group interviews – with two collectives in Mexico City: Las Siemprevivas and Fuentes Rojas. The results show that embroidery can become a form of emotional solidarity and collective healing, providing a way to express the “unspeakable”, and share experiences of injustice and loss. Embroidery fosters the establishment of meaningful connections, “affective communities” and “de-privatising” the pain. Bordado also serves as a form of (counter-)memory work – dignifying and humanising the victims of feminicide while creating a “textile archive” against forgetting. The embroidery circles ( juntanzas) offer spaces of mutual support, practices of care, and empowerment. Furthermore, as a political act of resistance and denunciation, activists carr y the bordados to demonstrations, exhibit them in museums and public spaces across Mexico and globally. By occupying sidewalks and plazas, activists reclaim public space and transform urban landscapes into sites of counter-memory and feminist resistance. In doing so, they fight the normalisation of violence, oppose victim-blaming, and sensitise the public. In short, bordar (to embroider) is a political, affective, and artistic practice that challenges gender-based violence and enacts collective feminist resistance in Mexico.
Trajectories of solidarities in Asia and beyond. The work of Arahmaiani, Phoebe Ching Ying Man and Sun Shaokun
In this article, I explore how three women artists working in Asia and beyond – Arahmaiani (Indonesia, b. 1961), Phoebe Ching Ying Man (Hong Kong, b.1969), and Sun Shaokun (People’s Republic of China, 1980-2016) – employ diverse artistic media to address gendered violence in their specific cultural contexts, while building transcultural solidarities. Notions of visual activism, feminism and solidarity are interwoven to critically analyse Burning body, burning country (1998, 1999 and 2024) by Arahmaiani, Rewriting history (2009-2012) by Phoebe Man, and Circumcision (2014) by Sun Shaokun. These works are feminist interventions that respond to gendered violence, such as rape and female genital mutilation, and expose marginalised stories of sufferance, trauma and healing. I discuss how their feminist visual activism transcends cultural and geographical boundaries, and contributes to larger dialogues on gendered violence, activating spaces for solidarities and advocacy for gender justice in Asia and beyond.
This editorial focuses on the potential of arts activist practices to raise awareness about gender-based violence (GBV) against women, which is one of the most pervasive human rights violations. It contextualises the discussion by the contributors to this special section of Image & Text, who attend to diverse instances of GBV: from everyday domestic violence, rape and sexual violence, feminicide, institutional misogyny within caste and army, to online abuse. GBV affects women across all socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, class, age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture, and/or sexuality. And yet there is an increasing global backlash against gender equality and an intensification of GBV, both of which are intimately connected to the rise of exclusionary politics and the widespread anti-gender and far-right rhetoric. This editorial outlines the relationship between violence against women and human rights, arguing for the urgent need to expose the systematic, structural heteropatriarchal conditions around GBV at a time when at least one in three women worldwide has experienced physical, sexual, or psychological abuse in their lives.
Silence will not protect you: Speaking up, speaking out, and speaking against domestic violence through the medium of jewellery in The body language - scars by Dominika Kuźniar
In this article, I focus on an art project entitled The body language - scars (2023 – ongoing) created by Dominika Kuźniar, a Polish jewellery artist. The collection, which includes six jewellery items, is explored as an arts activist practice raising awareness of gender-based violence, specifically domestic violence in Poland. I will pay attention to the new visual language developed by Kuźniar via the medium of jewellery to counter the culture of silence and shame surrounding domestic violence and encourage collective responsibility and accountability. Focusing on the language of jewellery, I interrogate how we hold space for women to speak up, speak out, and speak against GBV in solidarity a nd adjacency.
Caring about queer-feminist artists on social media. Thinking with critical friendship
In this article, I examine the challenging working conditions of queer-feminist artists on the social media platforms Instagram and Facebook, with a focus on gender-based violence, harassment, as well as automated discrimination carried out by the platforms and their algorithms. Based on interviews with five artists – Anahita Neghabat, Julischka Stengele, Natalie Assmann, Sophia Süßmilch, and Stefanie Sargnagel (based in Austria and Germany) – I analyse the platforms’ categorisation and classification of content as “undesired”, their opaque algorithmic rulings, and their practice of gaslighting users. Taking the artists’ experiences seriously and linking them to (social) media studies and feminist theory on public space, epistemology, and friendship, I reflect on methodology and knowledge production: I explore how the various forms and impacts of gender-based violence and automated discrimination against queer-feminist artists on social media can, on the one hand, be made visible and be discussed without reproducing violence, and, on the other hand, be transferred into academic discourse using a caring approach to epistemology.
That which remains: Memorialisation in art and the ‘living’ melancholy object
After the death of a loved one, specific objects transform to assume a unique identity and meaning to the bereaved. These melancholy objects, as articulated by Margaret Gibson (2004), start to have their own afterlife as objects memorialising the deceased, and the bereaved’s own experience of mourning. In this article, I consider how the melancholy object, as an impoverished replacement of the body of the deceased, echoes experiences of bereavement and ruination. I investigate the objects of grief and our changing relationship with them (Mathijssen 2017) through the example of an episode of the British television series Black Mirror (2011-) titled Be Right Back (2013). Furthermore, I consider how artists respond to complex experiences of grief and loss, and how this is influenced by melancholy objects, by generating meaning through visual picture-making and artmaking. I propose that my digital drawing, Sancrosanctity (2019), can address melancholy objects and loss to become a nuanced melancholy object. Although melancholy objects, devices, and acts reiterate and remind us of the devastation – the ruination – of loss, they are the closest we come to tangibly engaging with what remains of the deceased.
Sivivane sogogo!: An artistic reimagining beyond shadow and stone
In 2021, the Centre for Visual Arts (CVA) of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) initiated an artistic experiment with the KwaZulu-Natal Museum (KZNM). An artists’ collective formed under the motif of isivivane (the Isivivane Collective) – the isiZulu word for a pile of stones, or cairn – as a physical phenomenon as well as a metaphor for collective achievement through individual gestures over time. The project culminated in 2023 with Sivivane sogogo!, a six-month-long installation. Working with stones from the KZNM’s collections, including hand-axes, bored stones, grindstones, rock engravings, and morabaraba game boards spanning millennia of human/hominin history, the Collective produced an installation that deviated from the museum’s conventional mode of display. Two seminal strategies emerged: a playful approach that prioritised curiosity and problem-solving, and the underpinning principles of receptiveness and collaboration. In a challenge to the hierarchical monopolisation of vision and the museum as purveyor of information, authority shifted to the audience, giving way to an open-ended, individualised interpretation. The co-creation extended to non-human actors as well. From our reflections on this project, we propose an alternative paradigm for sustainable change to modes of museum display that integrates diverse narratives within the constitution of new knowledge through interdisciplinarity and audience participation.
Phoenixes and ashes: A close reading of selected work from Stairways and Ruins
In his curatorial statement for the exhibition Stairways and Ruins (2023), Andrew Lamprecht (2023:4) observes how the artworks in this exhibition emerged from a particular set of dire global circumstances, including the Covid-19 pandemic and the increasing threat of global conflict. Lamprecht (2023:4) suggests that the artworks in this exhibition, made in response to prompts that evoke themes of hope and disillusionment, ‘provided a moment of pause, of reflection and of introspection’. The idea that art reflects a particular historical moment is similarly suggested by the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1996:23), who argues that art embodies the style of a cultural era and reveals the historical being-in-the-world of human beings. He points to art’s ability to manifest, articulate or illuminate cultural and temporal concerns from within the world and time of that culture (Heidegger 1996; Dreyfus 2005). Heidegger also suggests that art reconfigures the traces of the past (Dreyfus 2005:416), a theme observed in several works in the Stairways and Ruins exhibition. Through a close reading of work by Kiveshan Thumbiran, Nicola Grobler, Corné Venter, Louisemarié Combrink, Lesego Motsiri and Pieter Odendaal, Danelle Heenop and Juan Steyn, and Héniel Fourie (in collaboration with Armand Aucamp and Paula Kruger), I consider how these artists reconfigure history as part of a contemporary moment that can be read through the cyclic, allegorical narrative of the myth of the phoenix. While the works thus reflect a particular moment in history, I consider how these artists grapple with what is ultimately part of a life cycle: catchinga phoenix on a burning day.
Hailed as the hottest new sports item to hit the streets and one of the best inventions of 1992, the Snakeboard is a next-generation skateboard which combines surfing, snowboarding and skiing. Consumer orientated and backed by a comprehensive marketing strategy, this product is rapidly expanding its export market.
Portfolio of South African designers: Ernst de Jong
On 2 March 1994, a retrospective exhibition of work by painter and graphic designer Ernst de Jong opened at the Pretoria Art Museum. The exhibition spanned De Jong's artistic career, and included works from the time he was a student at the University of Oklahoma, where he obtained a BFA degree, to his most recent series of paintings titled Spear of the Nation, completed in 1993.
Edoardo Villa: Conversation with a sculptor
The University of Pretoria was recently the fortunate recipient of a bequest made by one of South Africa's most well known and acclaimed sculptors, Edoardo Villa. The bequest includes several of the artist's large works, many smaller works, numerous maquettes, as well as his personal archives, library, awards and photographic records. Though the bulk of the work is still in the artist's studio and garden, twelve smaller pieces are in Pretoria already, giving an idea of what is still to come, and six large sculptures have been delivered and placed on campus, eliciting a mixed response from the student body as well as staff. Although the general level of visual literacy among the South African public is very low, the appearance of several new sculptures on campus has stimulated a lively debate.
While attending the Design Renaissance Conference in Glasgow in September 1993, I obtained some interesting information on a system for the standardised assessment of vocational competence.
The ability of craft to express the vitality of a culture has not had a significant impact on design in this country. South Africa's rich and diverse craft heritage needs to be reappraised by designers for the contributions it could make.
Five years ago, The Bridge, a post-graduate unit linked to the Department of Graphic Design, was established at Technikon Natal by lecturers Rick Andrew and Jeff Rankin. Sixteen higher diploma students and fifteen certificate students have qualified at the unit, which was founded with very clear objectives in mind.
A manufacturing industry competitive in export markets needs to secure the ownership of its designs and brand names. This is the central message of a paper presented by Dr Michael Hunt at the centenary conference of the SA Institution of Mechanical Engineers in September 1993.
Images of metal: Post-war sculptures and assemblages in South Africa
Graphic agitation: Social and political graphics since the sixties
Translating the traditional: Designs for Shangaan embroidery
An embroidery project combines traditional skill and a talent nurtured by formal art education into a range of products which is proving to be highly successful in creating a niche market for itself.
Nico Roos – Painter of landscape's living tissue
One of Nico Roos' former students once told me that the most important thing Roos had taught him was that the painter had to pay minute attention to every single square centimetre of the canvas. No part of the canvas, however far removed from the focus of attention, should be neglected or treated carelessly. The whole surface had to signify the care and attention of the artist.
lngrypende veranderinge in benaderings tot tipografie, tipografiese ontwerp en grafiese uitleg het die afgelope paar dekades ingetree wat grotendeels met die breër verskuiwing vanaf Modernisme na Postmodernisme ooreenstem. Modernistiese tipografie het aan spesifieke ideologiese, stilistiese en estetiese vereistes voldoen, maar daar word beweer dat daardie aspekte tekort skiet aan hedendaagse behoeftes van sekere ontwerpers en lesers. Die belangrikste beginsels van Modernistiese teenoor Postmodernistiese tipografie word in hierdie stuk ondersoek, met spesifieke verwysing na die huidige Suid-Afrikaanse konteks.
William Steyn’s pictographic illustrations in the booking kit for the 1994 Grahamstown National Arts Festival show how cliché images may be presented in a fresh and visually appealing way which is communicative, thematic and harmonious. The images which are used to identify performance categories and specific festival events, achieve a lively charm and succeed in conveying the spirit of an arts festival in Africa.