Burning: Womb of Fire
Mall of Africa Art exhibition: The Mall of Africa has created an artistic extravaganza for the month of April with an exhibition titled The Art Collective: Seasons in partnership with Julie Miller Investment Art. The Art Collective is the largest series of public art exhibitions in South Africa, with more than 200 pieces on display under one roof. It is also the first of its kind in South Africa, bringing art to life in a publicly accessible retail space, allowing for a new audience to be exposed to the artwork. Included in this collective are sculptor Jean Doyle and fine artist Azeal Langa. Details: The exhibition runs until April 29 at the Mall of Africa, Magwa Crescent, Halfway House, Midrand, in the mall’s upper level. Entrance to view is free. For more information visit juliemiller.gallery
Argentine Film Festival 2018: The Bioscope Independent Cinema and the South African Embassy in Argentina are presenting a weekend of contemporary Argentine film. The festival will show six films covering a range of themes from civilisation, class, romance and mental health all the way to dictatorship. Details: The festival takes place from April 20 to 22 at The Bioscope, 286 Fox Street, Johannesburg. Each screening costs R98 a person. For more information or to book tickets visit thebioscope.co.za
Womb of Fire: Written and performed by Rehane Abrahams, Womb of Fire is set against an episode from the Indian epic, The Mahãbhãrata. The play interweaves personal narrative and contemporary realities with the lives of two women from the Cape Colony’s founding years to interrogate the womb of fire that gave birth to South Africa. This will play out through Grote Katrijn van Pulicat’s journey (1681-1683) across India to Batavia and then to Cape Town. Also known as Catharina van Bengale, she was the first recorded female convict, a bandiet. The play also explores the briefly brutal life of Zara, a Khoekhoen servant who was violently punished posthumously by the VOC (the Dutch East India Company) for the crime of suicide. Womb of Fire looks at the power of the performing female body, while also decolonising and retrieving itself. The play reaches backwards and forward across time to reassemble the dismembered body, allowing it to speak. It is a roar, not a lament. Details: The Baxter Theatre, Main Road, Rondebosch, Cape Town, until May 5, with ticket prices ranging from R70 to R100. For more information visit baxter.co.za
Platitudes: In its fourth year of collaboration with the Market Theatre Lab, POP Art presents a season of off-the-wall adaptations from directors Monageng Motshabi and Nondumiso Msimanga through Platitudes. A platitude is a thing said too often to be interesting or uplifting. Through physical poetry, the production takes a look at grief. It plays with the ways grief moves and inhibits us. Platitudes investigates the need and futility of words in the lunacy of trying to make sense of the incomprehensible and asks its viewers: “What is grief?” Details: The play runs from April 19 to 22 at the POPArt Theatre, 286 Fox Street, Johannesburg. Tickets go for R100 online and R120 at the door. For more information or to book a ticket visit popartcentre.co.za