“The physical appearance of each Queen is based on eyewitness accounts, etchings or renderings and, if none are documented, I have used artistic licence based on her nationality, ethnicity, religion and accomplishments," Says Coetzee. "Each portrait contains clues that reveal biographical information about the queen and her historical context. I’ve incorporated gold leaf in each portrait, either as a background or in selected items, to add to the sense of power and royalty of each personality.”
Perhaps the most martial of all the portraits is that of Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa of the Ashanti nation in modern-day Ghana, who led an army of 5,000 in the Ashanti-British “War of the Golden Stool” at the end of the 19th Century.
An exhibition celebrating African queens from different parts of the continent
Cape Town-based artist Chantal Coetzee has produced a powerful new body of work whose subjects are literally African queens
Image: Chantal Coetzee
The term “African Queen” has become something of a pop culture honorific, a term not only of endearment but of empowerment, alluding to the strength, charisma and resilience of ordinary African women who rise above their circumstances with grace.
Cape Town-based artist Chantal Coetzee has produced a powerful new body of work whose subjects are literally African queens. “A Monstrous Regiment of Women” is a collection of portraits of meticulously researched historical subjects, all of whom were queens of their people in various parts of Africa in past centuries, comprising a fascinating social and political history consistently suppressed by subsequent generations of patriarchy and colonialism.
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The misleadingly forbidding title of the show is derived from the title of a polemic against women monarchs written in the 16th century, by miserabilist and misogynist Scottish Presbyterian John Knox. In pointed contrast to Knox’s assertion, Coetzee’s African queens are neither monstrous nor incompetent to rule. Each of the artist’s portraits are of rulers and monarchs mostly long-lived and successful in their leadership.
The six central portraits of the exhibition are all confrontationally face-on, though not aggressively so, each queen’s direct gaze marking her regal status and powerful mien. From various parts of Africa, including Ghana, Madagascar, Nigeria and SA, they range as rulers from the 17th to the 19th centuries.
Image: Chantal Coetzee
Image: Chantal Coetzee
“The physical appearance of each Queen is based on eyewitness accounts, etchings or renderings and, if none are documented, I have used artistic licence based on her nationality, ethnicity, religion and accomplishments," Says Coetzee. "Each portrait contains clues that reveal biographical information about the queen and her historical context. I’ve incorporated gold leaf in each portrait, either as a background or in selected items, to add to the sense of power and royalty of each personality.”
Perhaps the most martial of all the portraits is that of Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa of the Ashanti nation in modern-day Ghana, who led an army of 5,000 in the Ashanti-British “War of the Golden Stool” at the end of the 19th Century.
Image: Chantal Coetzee
Image: Chantal Coetzee
All of the six portraits are deliberately iconic, even decorative, and serve the purpose of restoring the herstories of these great rulers to their proper place. Coetzee’s style is thus to place each queen in a position of power gazing regally out at the viewer, the framing and background detail, corroborated by evidence from their pasts, providing a suitable backdrop for their empowerment and their greatness.
The approach of taking forgotten figures from history and restoring them to a properly allegorical and powerful contemporary setting, as if in tribute, is not unique to Coetzee — with Nandipha Mntambo for example, memorably having done so recently in her exhibition “Agoodje” at Everard Read. Coetzee’s thoroughly researched and finely executed portraits are great examples of the role art can play in reimagining social relations and emancipation from a received idea of the past.
22 September - 5 November 2022.
3RD i Gallery, 95 Waterkant Street, Cape Town.
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