Deepest Darkest presents Eucatastrophe

Deepest Darkest Presentes Hannelie Taute's solo show, Eucatastrophe

There has been much written and discussed around embroidery focusing on the 'Feminist' aspect and craft versus art. With both my stitching technique and the material onto which I embroider being 'imperfect' so to speak, my interest lies in the dysfunctional aspect of embroidery. In her book The Subversive Stich, Rozsika Parker notes: "Freud was to decide that constant needle work was one of the factors that 'rendered women particularly prone to hysteria' because day-dreaming over embroidery induced 'dispositional hypnoid states'.

Many of the original photographs that make up this body of work are found, sourced at flea markets, or donated by family and friends.

While many of the photographs were captured here, the posed wedding scenarios in these rescued and reused images recreate a time and place seemingly devoid of a greater local South African context of that time - idyllic gardens, photo studios. My adding masks from different cultures is perhaps a 're-stitching of a historical narrative' where these different cultures "marry" each other. Again, this speaks to the innocent ideal of a wedding being the promise of a magical ending.

Emily Fairchild, an associate professor of sociology at the New College of Florida in Sarasota specializing in gender and culture, noted that “Weddings are moments when gendered ideas become really clear. A wedding is a coup for women, because they’ve met their gendered expectation. By having a wedding, you prove your worthiness, your womanness, in a way that a man doesn’t need to. A man can be a man by having a job, in ways that aren’t tied to his family.”

Similar can be said for embroidery, especially the subject matter of a ‘genteel’ woman's embroidery during the eighteen and nineteenth centuries was as important as its execution in affirming her femininity (and thus her worth and worthlessness in the world's eyes). And what better way to advertise this achievement (besides announcing it in a newspaper) than hosting a grand affair centered on the woman who has fulfilled her dreams? I am drawn to this idea of most fairy tales culminate in a wedding, usually that of a woman who elevates her status in the world by getting hitched.

“Weddings historically have a long association with material well-being,” notes Professor Ruth Bottigheimer, a research professor in the Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory at Stony Brook University. In her book Magic Tales and Fairy Tale Magic, where she dates the obsession with weddings to the 1500’s (when the first fairy tales emerged in Europe) she further notes: “If not, you have a miserable life as a maiden aunt, a lady in waiting, where you serve someone else’s life. A wedding is social success.”

My own experience and expression as a woman, a wife and mother is constantly a work in progress. Working on this body of work, I thought a lot about weddings before, during and after the pandemic. Why do people still want to get married today, and why is the divorce rate so high? Peggy Orenstein the author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter speculates in an article for the New York Times (Chasing the Fairy Tale Wedding) that weddings may be so popular precisely because the divorce rate is so high. “Maybe people think that if they do the wedding, it’ll mask the hard work later on. Maybe it’s that marriage is such an anachronism you have to go into it with a big bang.”

Hannalie Taute, 2021

Deepest Darkest Presentes Hannelie Taute's solo show, Eucatastrophe

Many of the original photographs that make up this body of work are found, sourced at flea markets, or donated by family and friends.

Hannalie Taute, 2021

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