In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

7 Interweaving Narratives of Art and Activism SandraKriel’sHeroicWomen kIm mIlleR This chapter considers the relationship between the process of political radicalization and the production of visual culture in the work of Sandra Kriel, a South African artist who depicts politically active women in her work. A participant in South Africa’s resistance art movement, Kriel came of age as an artist and activist during the fight against apartheid, and she is now well known as a politically engaged artist.1 Less is known, however, about the ways in which her commitment to social change and her collaborations and conversations with anti-apartheid activists directly shaped her creative work, in particular her efforts to make visible the integral role that women played in South Africa’s struggle for freedom. Not only do the practices of collaboration and conversation bear directly on Kriel’s formation as an artist, and especially her political activism as a form of knowledge production , but these are also the tools with which I learned about Kriel’s work. The significance of these processes became clear to me during my extensive interviews and conversations with Kriel (2007–2010), which took place in the larger context of my research on South African women artists and activists. The text that follows traces her participation in women’s and arts organizations by building an artistic biography from our interviews, and analyzes how her activism in turn led her to pursue an artistic vision that helped create and sustain political identities and recognition for women. Toward this end, I first consider Kriel’s political radicalization as it developed largely through conversations and interactions with other activists. The first section of this chapter is based largely on Kriel’s own words and the ways in which she has chosen to tell the story of her development as an activist and artist. I rely heavily on direct quotations from Kriel in order to allow her to represent herself and to foreground her voice as a primary source of knowledge, and I carefully stitch together Kriel’s voice with my own. interweAvinG nArrAtives of Art And ActivisM 99 These conversations then inform the second section of the chapter, where I consider how the narratives of apartheid play out differently in Kriel’s work, compared to other resistance artists, as a direct result of her feminist activism. Just as Kriel’s conversations and collaborations with anti-apartheid activists enabled her visual production, so too my interviews with Kriel are critical to the production of my analysis and understanding of her work. For example, as I listened to Kriel describe her experiences with various activist groups, I saw a very clear connection between her personal biography and the artwork that she produced much later in life. In her words, I heard a story of female empowerment, a story that evolved from hopelessness into courage and that eventually led Kriel to develop a unique artistic vision. It is my assertion that Kriel’s artistic work extends the established visual narrative of anti-apartheid heroism through the creation of an iconography of women’s political portraiture, which has made particular women known as named individuals and recognizable as political actors in their own right. The visual focus of this chapter is a single work from For our Fallen Comrades (1991–1992), a series that features women who contributed to the liberation struggle, placing women’s political consciousness and contributions within the wider political environment of the struggle against apartheid. This work is analyzed in an effort to understand how Kriel’s conversations and interactions with various groups of activists led to the creation of works that focus on, recognize, and celebrate the work of women political activists within the broader political movement. Interviews and dialogues of all sorts work across and within the process of political radicalization, the production of visual culture, and this resulting art historical narrative, which presents and interprets the visual. Radicalization through Conversation Neither political activism nor the visual arts were likely options for Sandra Kriel, who was raised in a local and familial context where creativity was not valued and political engagement seemed nonexistent. Born in 1952, just four years after the apartheid regime came to power, Kriel spent her youth in Stellenbosch, a rural Afrikaans town located in the center of South Africa’s celebrated wine country and known as the “breeding ground of National Party leaders.”2 This setting thoroughly embodied the political policies of apartheid, most notably through the successful...

Share