Artist 8 Hannalie Taute
The little Devil
Hannalie Taute is a South African artist who deals with rubber and found objects using embroidery to create sculptures, tapestries and assemblages.
She explores the themes of feminism, language, fairy tales and popular culture. She works extensively with the Other. She manipulates pre-existing thoughts, narratives and phrases and recreates them drawing new perspective and as such new questions into the work.
‘My work is the culmination of research into emotions, psychology and fantasy. I find inspiration in myths, legends, lyrics, literature and especially fairy tales and is drawn to the universality of these ancient stories which exist all over the world and points to a common humanity. It is often just the title of an original fairy tale that remains in my work; I find my contemporaneous edge by subverting the original meaning and also by replacing the main characters with myself or my family members. ‘ - Hannalie Taute
Using themes of Escapism and Popular Culture in fine art can be tricky in how you subvert pre-existing opinions but it can also make art far more powerful. It is a fine line that I feel Taute embroiders into her art.
Her clever use of language acts as a starting point. For example with her sculptural work ‘The little Devil’. She takes a common term often used to describe that children have a little devil in them which means that all children can be naughty.
She has taken this expression and created her version of the little devil.
The size of the sculpture suggests a young child’s plaything. It draws a parallel between the darkness associated with a devil and how we affectionately use it to describe children.
The purposeful thick white stitches reflects a childlike and voodoo like element. It adds a garish morbidity to the body of the sculpture. The use of rubber itself a very cold material and reflects a very un-human texture for her humanoid creatures.
It’s physical shape is deformed and morphed with spikes protruding from its back. The mask it wears suggests a mask and I want to ask what you think the mask is representing?
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