FULL PRESS STATEMENT
Berman Contemporary presents Mother. Monster. Stitch.
A monographic exhibition by Hannalie Taute
Curated by Karolien van Zyl
Berman Contemporary, Cape Town | 6 December 2025 – 22 February 2026

In Mother. Monster. Stitch., the family portrait misbehaves.
South African artist, Hannalie Taute, pierces and re-stitches the rituals of
womanhood – weddings, motherhood, composure – transforming them into
something raw, playful and grotesque. Working with discarded rubber, thread, and
vintage photographs, Taute rewrites domestic mythologies one puncture at a time.
Her embroidered figures: wives, mothers, daughters, and archetypes oscillate
between tenderness and menace, humour and unease. The embroidery – bright,
tactile, and slightly unhinged – turns familiar rituals of respectability inside out. Masks
grin too wide, flowers bloom where they shouldn’t, and the surface trembles with the
tension between what’s shown and what’s endured.

Taute’s unsettling humour is inseparable from her material logic – the stitch that holds
and distorts at once. Combining embroidery with reclaimed rubber, she challenges
expectations of both medium and subject. Stitching becomes resistance – a physical
rhythm that reclaims the handmade as thought. Each work enacts a small, tactile
rebellion.

“Taute’s women pose for the camera while the thread unravels them,” notes curator
Karolien van Zyl. “What we call monstrous might simply be the truth showing
through.”

In a moment when women’s images are endlessly performed, filtered, and
monetized, Taute’s stitched portraits reclaim the beauty of imperfection. Her works
speak to a wider cultural reckoning – how femininity is constructed, consumed, and
undone in both art and everyday life. By turning domestic craft into critique, she joins
a global chorus of feminist artists reworking the boundaries between care and
control, tenderness and defiance.

Mother. Monster. Stitch. re-imagines the monstrous feminine not as fear, but as
vitality – a language of becoming that insists on the power of imperfection. In a world
increasingly mediated by code and control, Taute reasserts the slow intelligence of
the hand. Each piece reminds us that repair, like survival, is never complete.
Presented as part of Berman Contemporary’s newly launched Cape Town
programme, Mother. Monster. Stitch., marks the gallery’s first major monograph in
the city – a bold statement of intent to foreground women artists whose work fuses
material innovation with feminist storytelling.

Enquiries: gallery@bermancontemporary.co.za

Mother.Monster.Stitch exhibition guide, courtesy of the gallery, which is not just another online catalogue, because besides images, dimensions and prices of the works, it also contains curatorial notes and my reflection on the works.  Click on the link below to view:

Berman Contemporary is a pioneering gallery dedicated to women artists. Through
mentorship, visibility, and sustained support, it nurtures creative practices and
amplifies women’s voices – enabling them to shape the future of contemporary art
both locally and globally.