The Maiden Perfect, 2005
Reinforced PVC, 145 x 150cm

The Maiden Perfect captures an anonymous woman at the point of her dying as if in a 1950s filmic moment.

This was a time when the artist's own mother paraded around a swimming pool during her honeymoon on the Castle Line cruiseliner, was presented with a sash and golden crown, and declared Castle Queen.

The Maiden Perfect becomes the representational death of post-war values of high ideals, family, hope and virtue and it draws on such tragic moments as the mournful death of the captain's daugther in "The Wreck of the Hesperus" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Also, the physical loss of the young maiden in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Red Shoes" who becomes a virtuous cripple by physically learning to curb her lust for shiny red.

The Maiden Perfect remains a fictitious narrative, where elements in the narrative keep the viewer from believing the story: the backdrop is embroidered, the shadow of her dying body is too prominent, the actress is holding her poise too easily for someone being strangled. This staged narrative however can withstand extreme weather conditions, since it's printed onto reinforced PVC: billboard material.

Notes by Bridget Baker
February 2005

see artbio

"Suzy's lovers" series, 2004
Digital images on canvas, 35 x 45cm

see artbio

Mother 1 and Mother 1 series, 2004
Photomontage on canvas, 30 x 40cm

The artist has montaged found images of her mother and grandmother over landscapes she photographed through rural and outlying areas of the Western Cape. So-called 'barren landscapes'.

'Mother' aims to explore the notion of sexuality amongst older women. Breukel found these images of her mother and grandmother, which clearly display and acknowledge their presence as sexual beings - sexual desire existed and still exists in these women. These once youthful figures have been forcibly recontextualised and placed in a fantasy theatre - allowing them to act out hidden sexual desires latent beneath their roles of mother/ grandmother (roles we rarely see them in).

see artbio

Conversations # series, 2004/5
Mobile phone images, pigment print on archival paper, 42.5 x 47cm

Conversations # is a series of digital photographs taken with the artists' cell phone camera on nights out and about in Cape Town.

see artbio

Document #8, 2004
DVD

Document #8 is a deconstruction of the Beauty Queen myth. A beauty pageant contestant is trapped in a looped parallel world. The contestant has no name and is reduced to a number. The atmosphere is oppressive and the contestant performs over and over again to an unseen camera. Document #8 questions notions of glamour, and the promise of stardom and fame.

see artbio

32 to 40 Weeks series, 2004/5
Pigment print on archival paper, 33 x 36cm

The series documents the transformation of the pregnant body during the last six weeks of pregnancy. The changing body signifies shifts of identity from individual to that of mother or parent.

The pregnant belly is a heavily loaded signifier. It can bring out a range of external response from admiration to rage. In a strange dichotomy, the body is no longer one's private business. A Victorian attitude still exists where the pregnant body should be hidden from view. Simultaneously, the body seemingly becomes public property, open to opinion and consent to be touched by strangers.

A peephole device places the viewer in a voyeuristic role of outsider, looking in on the woman in the private space of her bathroom.

see artbio

Brigitta's Boudoir Boards series, 2004
Decoupage on masonite board, 1200 x 2020cm

The work centres around the usefulness of women's bodies, how they are used and what is expected of them. The body as object, the body as subject. The artist says "Put yourself in my body. See how it feels". The meanings in all the works are multileveled and open to individual interpretation. A woman's work is never done! The boards have their own life story with many options in parallel universes and like all of ours, we don't quite know when it will end.

see artbio

From six to two series, 2004
Black & White photographs, 40 x 60cm

Dorothee Kreutzfeldt in collaboration with Market Theatre Photography Workshop photographers, Ingrid Masondo and Keorapetse Mosimane. The collaborative team aim to work literally with the title of the exhibition setting up Tableau Vivant-like scenes of a group of 'girls' dressed readily for their night out. The girls in this case are black gay women from the townships around Johannesburg. Dress codes and pose, from boy/gentleman drag to femme will make up the scenario's fictitious/ romantic/real 'charge'.

Ice skater #1-3 series, 2005
Lambda prints, 100 x 100cm

see artbio

Men of El Max series, 2005
Pigment print on archival paper, 32 x 45.7cm

In El Max, a small fishing community in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, life is lived much as it has been for centuries. In the main street, not much happens during the day, but as the sun goes down, the small shops open and the men come out to enjoy the night, smoke shisha pipes and play dominoes in the café while the women stay in their houses. As a foreign woman on an art residency in El Max, the gender rules did not apply to me, and I was gradually accepted, welcomed into the café, and after a week began to be invited to take photographs, which I printed out at night on a small portable printer. These images were received by the men with great enthusiasm.

see artbio