Who is Guarding the Guardians

Another powerful work by Linda. This current body of work is a personal response to the historic omission of Afrikaner female identities constrained by Calvinist patriarchy in order to establish how this legacy of suppression continued to affect gender roles, religious control, and social disparities during the twentieth century.

Her aim is to show how artworks can ‘speak’ and are thus able to fill the archival gaps of previously marginalized groups. She attempts to counteract the undervaluation of women and craft in her work by combining the subversive strategy of embroidery as fine art with the actual act of stitching in order to ‘suture’ alternative identities. The torn 1938 topographical maps of The Union of South Africa are incorporated to highlight troubling legacies and as disruption of patriarchal hierarchies.