YEKEBANI LE PANTY? By Carin Bester and Peggy Tunyiswa. Artscape.
MEGAN CHORITZ reviews
“A sight specific, interventional performance art piece which questions the patriarchal structure imposed on womxn, especially in a South African context.”
Disclaimer: I am allergic to Women’s Day and Women’s Month. It feels like August has become an open invitation for men to showcase their cruelty, disregard, and abuse of women. This year’s precursor to Women’s Month was the violent gang rape of eight women in a crime that then forgot the women entirely and focused instead on foreign national illegal miners.
I struggle to find things to ‘celebrate’ during Women’s Month and the pink flyers that offer discounts on beauty products and 30% off on accessories are nothing short of sick.
Yet. I headed down to Artscape on Sunday to witness this performance art piece, Yekabani le Panty?, and it reached me, moved me and left me in tears.
Artscape did their Women’s Month celebration no favours. The massive precinct was empty and silent. I was nervous walking through the wind tunnel to outside the arena. A few people were waiting outside to go and see a matinee and they became the audience for the piece.
Mesmerising piece
Dressed in bras and massive brown skirts covered in panties, Carin Bester and Peggy Tunyiswa performed this mesmerising piece, with spoken word in Afrikaans, English and Xhosa, and it was riveting.
Its message is clear. We have become the women we are because of how we have been ‘schooled’, made, expected to be, and it is too much to carry. It is a very heavy load.
There was a poor female security guard who I imagine was there to keep the performers safe, who stood between them like a theatre bomber. Immobile. Facing the audience. Part of this terrible drama.
I hope this work will be developed and made longer, into something that people can really sit with, instead of just being a moment, and then we get on with our day, our lives. I hope that one day this work will not be necessary, but I’m not holding my breath. And I am grateful that artists like Carin and Peggy are making this work.
WS
