embodied-entanglements/entangled-embodiments

Bev Butkow Bev Butkow. embodied-entanglements 2020 Site-specific installation Bag Factory Artist Studios, Newtown, Johannesburg. © Bev Butkow. Photos: Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

Portfolio April 2021

Making process in brief

I create tactile textured woven/painted organic forms which I call embodiedentanglements/entangled-embodiments (eXe). eXe are layered, encrusted moments of connection that knot together mundane everyday materials, rhythmic weaving gestures of my body and those of my studio assistants, thereby juxtaposing elements of the material, personal and social. Expanding dimensionally into space, eXe get activated as quasi-humans, dispersing into the flow of the world. These free-flowing autographic moments, which teeter in a fragile equilibrium between holding together and unravelling, hold the tensions of how the worldly female body relates to space, context and the social and material worlds. I insert my body into the making process, which gets directed by its sedimented accumulation of experiences and embodied knowledge. The resultant process is organic, fluid, reflexive, messy and spontaneous. I weave as a form of expanded painting to consider what expanded and unbounded mean in relation to bodies, lives, materials, performative making practices and space. This is a way to deconstruct and recreate new forms of relating and co-existing in our complex contemporary world.

Overview of process My deeply material process creates tactile textured surfaces that expand dimensionally to consider how women occupy and hold space within the complex network of roles and positions we assume. I entangle slow and progressive making processes, deep experimentation with materials and the materiality of my body into abstracted woven, painted, entangled sculptural forms, which I call embodied-entanglements/entangled-embodiments (eXe). These heavily-laden heavily-laboured sedimented constellations take the small, routine, mundane and every-day, and transform them through investing time and energy in them. They expand dimensionally into multi-layered masses that get caught in the flows of the world, taking on new forms each time they are hung. eXe possess a messiness and disorder: loose threads crisscross haphazardly and fibre endings are left untangling. Porous gaps and interstices create networks of connections that teeter in a fragile equilibrium between holding together and disintegrating. Through this, they are permeable to forces of the world, absorbing them and being marked by them. Like skin.

Each knotted tangled expressive eXe captures a moment of intersection and connection between bodies, objects and materials. These connections include the socially-coded materials that make them up; the rhythmic movements of my artist-wife-mother-woman-student-global citizen body; my social context and embodiment; the experiences of labour of my weaving assistants; and the context within South African artistic practice. This intermeshing facilitates an expanded view of the woven surface.

Dispersed eXe hold together in a precarious state of ravelling and unravelling, dissolving into the background and then reasserting themselves. Through their porosity, a shifting happens between surface and depth, creating a tension between what is visible, and what is not. They juxtapose other contradictory elements: the tiny and insignificant are monumentalised; my practice of expanded painting is set against weaving; flat rhythmic woven planes contrast free-form dimensional objects; my socialised-disciplined embodiment contrasts my innate creative self.

I challenge the comfortable rhythm of weaving, unlearning patterns of my body’s rhythmic habits of work. Processes of un-rhythm disrupt embodied experiences, creating space for new rhythms and embodied knowledges. This liberates my body from controlling discipline and imposed constraints.

Through processes of making, I unravel order and then attempt to make sense of disorder.

My embodied approach, with its deep investment in process, is reflexive and contextually-situated.

The performative power of creative making acts as antidote to the socialised-disciplined, facilitating stepping out of hidden patterns of encoded behaviour towards new potential and expandedness.

My process looks towards unfixed forms that transcend figuration and representation, that are relevant rather through the activities that bring them into being and their sensory textures. eXe facilitate a meditation around what ‘unbounded’, fluid and expanded mean in relation to bodies, lives, materials, making practices and space.

embodied-entanglements, Site-specific installation – detail Newtown, Johannesburg. © Bev Butkow. Photos: Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

Site-specific installation embodied-entanglements/entangled-embodiments 2020 Bag Factory Artist Studios, Newtown, Johannesburg. © Bev Butkow. Photos: Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

During Covid lockdown, I worked on a monumental scale, using the layered-memory-filled-innercity grittiness of the Bag Factory Artist Studios, Johannesburg, to create an immersive environment that knotted over 30 embodied-entanglements/entangled-embodiments (eXe) into the physical structure of the building. When viewed, a seemingly random layering of visual elements hit the eye: mishappen woven hanging forms; a precarious sense of incompleteness; undulating shadows; painted canvases crumpled on the floor as support for sculptural objects; suspended looms fashioned out of disused oil-painting stretchers. A ‘Weave Tower’ grows upwards, made through haphazardly tying together semi-complete weaves still attached to their makeshift looms. Its supporting wooden rods buckle under their weight, yet the ‘Tower’ resists gravity in a fragile equilibrium between holding upright and collapsing. The installation space is multisensory–– dramatic performative lighting, shadow, movement and a sonic piece highlight experiential moments, engaging the viewer’s senses. eXe are flung around the space with a gravity-defying weightlessness, like embodied fragments strewn across the room. They are held in formation by flimsy ribbons, wool, transparent fishing gut and other tangled threads. These supports, extending randomly through the space, use the walls and exposed ceiling rafters as armature, functioning as distributed warp strings that turn the space into a giant dynamic weaving loom. The site of the Bag Factory Artist Studios is evocative: what was a labour-intensive bag manufacturing factory became a legacy creative institution that vigorously defied apartheid’s racial segregation laws and is now a hub that facilitates creative exchange and actively supports artistic careers.

Layering legacy, echoes, memories, woven marks, materials and relationships, the installation forms an experiential and performative network of social and cultural interactions, forming intricate networks of connectivity and interactions that facilitate a circulation of ideas, of experiences, of relationships.

Site-specific installation embodied-entanglements/entangled-embodiments Technical specifications

The installation comprises approximately 31-33 artworks, including: • • • • •

7 paintings (2 stretched on looms, 5 unstretched) 7 framed weaves (4 left on repurposed painting stretcher looms, 3 post-fitted/made-to-purpose frames) 6 free-form suspended woven forms 1 self-standing sculptural assemblage 1 weave tower, comprising around 10-12 framed weaves, all on repurposed painting stretcher looms

It embodies approximately 5.5 years of combined work: • • •

Bev - 3 years (ongoing) Marguerite Visser – 1.5 years Pinky Moyo – 1 year

embodied-entanglements, Site-specific installation – detail Newtown, Johannesburg. © Bev Butkow. Photos: Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

Detail, embodied-entanglements, 2020. Site-specific installation. © Bev Butkow. Photos: Bev Butkow, Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

Detail, embodied-entanglements, 2020. Site-specific installation. © Bev Butkow. Photos: Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

Detail, embodied-entanglements, 2020. Site-specific installation. © Bev Butkow. Photos: Bev Butkow, Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

Detail, embodied-entanglements, 2020. Site-specific installation, Bag Factory Artist Studios, Newtown, Johannesburg. © Bev Butkow.

Photos: Bev Butkow, Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

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Claiming my space (part of the embodied-entanglements installation) Wool, string, rope, cord, ribbon, embodied traces of time/labour/exertion/conversation/instruction on wooden painting stretcher. Oil paint and fabric on canvas 2020 2m x 2m x 3m © Bev Butkow. Photos: Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

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Claiming my space An element in embodied-entanglements installation) Wool, string, rope, cord, ribbon, embodied traces of time/labour/exertion/conversation/instruction on wooden painting stretcher. Oil paint and fabric on canvas 2020 2m x 2m x 3m © Bev Butkow. Photos: Anthea Pokroy, Thekiso Mokhele

Film piece Title: embodied-entanglements/entangled-embodiments 2020 6 minutes 12 seconds Film footage Nidaa Husian Shooting format digital Link: https://vimeo.com/44491554

In this film piece, I use threads, knots and entanglements to continue my exploration of the rhythms of work, the precariousness of spatial relationships that simultaneously hold together and fall apart, and the tensions caused by experiences and expectations of gendered bodies in the social and material world.

The viewer is invited to engage with close-ups of woven surface. By drawing attention to the everyday materials, traces of gestures and hand movements and a multiplicity of tiny beads, the film piece captures the texturedness of everyday life and the intensity of work that goes into being a woman, a mother and an artist.

The encounter with these tactile experiential moments solicits a sensory response from the viewer that is intuitive and bodily, rather than intellectual. In this way, the film piece frames bodily encounters as a source of meaning, considering how we track/trace knowledge generated through our body, even when that knowledge is opaque.

Lighting, shadow, movement and the sonic piece are central to how the film piece engages the viewer’s senses. Theatrical lighting immerses the precariously hung amorphous forms in its tactile qualities, so that the tiniest movement brings undulating shadows. These activate the forms.

Animating them.

The forms appear to be embodied, coming to life as quasi-human presences within the space. These are becoming-forms.

Film piece - cont

This animation accentuates a feeling of presence and absence. It highlights a disembodiment which reflects the lockdown conditions under which the underlying installation and film piece were made and the tension of creating an artwork about connection in a world forced to distance. The film medium facilitates a very different engagement with material forms intended to be experienced as hands-on, tactile and immersive. Somatic relationships get mediated through the digital. Initiated by the Covid-imperative to translate my experiential installation into digital form, I became absorbed in the challenge of translating the fundamental handprints and themes of my practice into digital medium. The film has accordingly taken on its own identity and stands as an independent art piece. Transformation is central to my practice, engaging different ways of thinking around my conceptual concerns. Transforming materials, transforming myself, transforming making practices, and transforming my understanding of relationships.

Screenings: FilmFreeway, The First-Time Filmmaker Showcase 2021 Lift-Off New Year Extravaganza 2021 Darkest Before Dawn: Art in a Time of Uncertainty, Ethan Cohen KuBe, New York

Dimensional free-flowing free forms Each formless hand-woven eXe has a unique organic shape, and combination of materials and markmaking. Its woven surface acts defiantly––rather than a traditional well-behaved weave, its surface is unexpected: knotted, tangled with encrusted objects, taut tension in areas set against flacid looseness.

These out-of-control heavily-worked material surfaces envelope the viewer within woven marks, pulls, hanging threads, surface depths. They are at once sensitive and delicate, unruly and chaotic.

I disrupt my carefully woven-together surfaces. I take them off the loom without tying the ends, unravelling, stretching, distressing them; I strip old paintings, drip encaustic wax, obliterate carefully-made marks.

This is weaving gone wild.

This is an uprising.

I paint over woven surfaces, I weave into painted surfaces, rearranging and manipulating them into dimensional forms. Processes that create order and coherence are followed by those that fragment and unravel. This itinerant process of unravelling-reravelling-reworking disrupts and closes back to structure/order.

It embeds gaps and interstices in the disrupted surfaces, make them permeable, porous…

These autographic encounters embody a state of instability. Their explosion of materiality, obliterating apart yet held together by the structuredness of the surface, teeters between pulled-togetherness and falling apart.

They embody an expansion and contraction, breaking out, hurtling outwards, freeing from the control imposed by two dimensions, and then conforming to the weft-warp grid again. eXe never achieves fixity. They existing in a constant state of absorbing and reflecting, rotating between solidity and a fluidity that defies the definitive. They reflect the multiple-experienced physical material body of the contemporary woman with its vulnerability and strength. Through the shifting focus between surface and background, firm boundaries around objects are loosened. Integrating the forms into the environment, they become hybrid-figure-ground that challenge the boundaries of space. eXe exist in a state of fluid unsettlement, a state of aliveness, which encourages flow to enter the process.

Activities of making bring materials, forms and bodies into being, putting them into motion in a process of becoming (Deleuze’s term).

Challenge the bounds of acceptability Plastic mesh, repurposed canvas, fabric, ribbon, metal washers 20189 Variable size – approx. 140 x 92 x 20 cm

Though created through the act of weaving, my eXe are expanded paintings, which anticipate paintings that grow out their frames into explicit third dimension. Since painting became ‘post-medium’ and no longer defined by its material specificity, painting has been reframed as a conceptual material practice.

Emerging, disappearing, refusing the Invisibility Cloak I Beads, pearls, string, cord, dishcloths, metal stoppers, plastic mesh 2019 Variable size – approx 106 x 92 x 20 cm

Expansion and contraction Plastic mesh, repurposed canvas, fabric, dishwashing cloths, metal washers 2018 Variable size – approx 190 x 220 cm

Constrained I & II with Pinky Moyo 2019 String, embodied traces of time/labour/exertion/conversation/ instruction, resin, acrylic, beads made in China, fishing gut, gold leaf 36 x 32 x 16 cm 27 x 34 x 12 cm

Subversive disruption with Marguerite Sanders Plastic mesh, repurposed canvas, fabric, dishwashing cloths 2018 Variable size – approx. 100 x 110 cm, excluding hanging bits

Expansion and contraction with Marguerite Sanders Plastic mesh, repurposed canvas, fabric, dishwashing cloths, metal washers 2018 Variable size – approx. 190 x 220 cm

A mesh of complicit reinforcement with Marguerite Sanders Plastic mesh, repurposed canvas, fabric, dishwashing cloths 2018 Variable size – approx. 110 x 105 cm excl hanging bits

Challenge the bounds of acceptability - detail with Marguerite Sanders Plastic mesh, repurposed canvas, fabric, ribbon, metal washers 2018 Variable size – approx. 106 x 92 x 20 cm

Call and response Each woven surface, crafted through the eye and hand of a maker, records tactile and sensory traces of the connection between skin and material.

Weaving is a build-up of layers of labour. The surface builds slowly. Methodically. 1000’s of tiny repetitive bodily gestures accumulate into the woven objects. Weaving consumes time. Forced to slow down and allow the process to unfold at its own pace. Beyond repetition, beyond discipline, beyond materials, weaving consumes labour.

The time- and labour-intensive processes of weaving led me to work with studio assistants.

The hand-worked surface is porous to these interactions: working with assistants changes its texture.

Formed by a collective of female bodies as we engage deeply in disciplined studio-based practice, it entangles a network of female hands and bodies.

The indelible imprinted traces of each person’s fingerprint-like contribution accumulates within the surface, which expands to capture these collective movements, gestures and creative decisions. This reflects in unexpected marks, colour schemes and material choices which bring chance and spontaneity into the making-process. Our combined sedimented life experiences, autographic life traces and experiences of work become embedded in the sedimented surface as tactile, sensory traces.

The rhythms of the complex dynamics and hierarchy of work structure get deposited in the woven surface, which holds the flow of the intimacy and reciprocity of these relationships. My eXe raise considerations around the role of assistants in art-making practices about instruction, acknowledgement and authority, in addition to complex topical issues in South African around privilege, education, work experience and access to financial means. eXe becomes a performance of the making process: a record of experiences that get coded into female bodies, including the labour-intensity and invisibility of much gendered labour through structures of work.

As an interface between our different bodies and the viewer’s, they set up an exchange in the form of a somatic affective dialogue. As a mode of communication that uses a non-verbal somatic register, creative processes are a useful mechanism for considering complex topics.

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Untitled with Marguerite Sanders Lawnmower cord, repurposed painting stretcher frame, wool, embodied traces of time/ labour/exertion/conversation/ instruction, scrap dressmaking fabric, fishing gut, repurposed artwork, insulation tape, string, cable ties, wooden, plastic and glass beads made in China 2019 190 x 220 cm

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A Material Presence with Marguerite Sanders 2019 Lawnmower cord, wool, embodied traces of time/ labour/exertion/conversation/ instruction, washing-up cloth, scrap dressmaking fabric, fishing gut, repurposed artwork, insulation tape, string, cable ties, wooden, plastic and glass beads made in China 120 x 95.5 cm

An Embodied Labour with Marguerite Visser Sanders 2019 String, repurposed painting stretcher frame, embodied traces of time/ labour/exertion/creative process 120 x 120 cm

Call And Response series with Marguerite Sanders Fabric cord, string, hessian, repurposed painting stretcher frame, embodied traces of time/ labour/exertion/creative process insulation tape, acrylic, gold leaf 2019 Sizes around 111 x 88 cm

Shadow series

A process of mapping tension/shadows Acrylic, graphite, ink, fine-liner, gouache, encaustic wax on Fabriano 2020 100 x 140cm

A process of mapping tension/shadows - detail Acrylic, graphite powder, ink, fine-liner, gouache, encaustic wax on Fabriano 2020 100 x 140cm

Entanglement V with Pinky Moyo 2019 Plastic, wood and glass beads made in China, fishing gut, string, embodied traces of time/labour/exertion/conversation/ instruction, acrylic, gold leaf and digital print on canvas 50 x 50 cm (unframed size)

A body of material traces 2019 Thread, beads made in China, embodied traces of time/ labour/exertion/creative process, acrylic and digital print on canvas 68 x 50 cm (unframed size)

Entanglement series with Pinky Moyo Embodied traces of time/ labour/exertion/conversation/ instruction and weaving with string, dishcloth, wooden and plastic beads on printed canvas 2019 50 x 50 cm

Traces of Labour series Silkscreen Monotype 2019 Series printed with master printer Cloudia Hartwig at Chocolate Ink Studios

The Immaterial Material I build up the surface to an intensity. It feels insistent. Over worked. This is attentionseeking––activating the surface to draw the viewer in. This additive process of sedimenting materials is an accumulation of consumption. Layer upon layer.

Thousands of tiny beads and mundane everyday materials are woven together. The sheer number of beads. More materials. Unable to take another bead without breaking. The built-up heavily sedimented layered surface is overladen with its carefully-chosen combination of materials and objects.

Encrusted, my surfaces absorb materials which are laden with associative readings/interpretations, becoming marked by them.

I use a mix of mundane and familiar objects that relate to how female bodies engage in the world. Fabrics interface intimately between the person/ human body and her environment. My selection is an eclectic mix of textile-linked materials and domestic objects. Offcuts of dressmaking fabric, a jumble of yarns and threads, wool, elastics, brightly-coloured ribbon, the canvas of old paintings. Fabrics from my home evoke family dynamics bound together by materiality, foregrounding the dismissed domestic space.

Some hold deep personal resonance… fragments of memories… like my grandmother re-sewing hand-me-down dresses, ribbon hoarded (in carefullyunwrapped carefully-refolded carefully-preserved wrapping paper)… a young me rummaging through her treasure-trove drawers: buttons, threads, safety pins.

Nothing was discarded. Everything had a use, and a reuse.

Everyday materials were made precious.

Alongside this, sit a variety of mundane everyday objects––cord, string, metal washers, cable ties, shredded plastic shopping bags. These factory-made homogenous consumer products are purchased in bulk relatively cheaply from haberdashery and hardware shops, and have little individual value. These eclectic materials support our daily lives, providing utility value yet are consumed without particular regard.

The Immaterial Material - cont

One could read defiance in this unruly conglomeration of materials–disordered, mismatching.

Subtle, controlled disruption, building up to an intensity that breaks out of any confining or coded reading of the material. This is weaving being corrupted. Becoming a rebel. I draw my materials to meaning by how I use them. There is a fluidity to this use: some are used in very specific ways; some more general; some keep their innate associations; others are subverted and disrupted. The modes of expression available to eXe are broadened through how I experiment with unexpected juxtaposed combinations of everyday materials; giving them the opportunity to combine in any way, to be anything; to self-actualize in this way.

I take these mass-produced homogenous consumer items and give them individual attention, working them by hand. The use of the everyday here is defiant. I unsettle the ordinary and mundane, making it extraordinary and bringing the specialness of art to ordinary objects. The extraordinary is woven from the mundane, dismissed and unnoticed.

Activities of making bring materials into being. Instead of seeing materials in binary to me, I get into flow with them, exploring their physical properties with sensitivity. I view them as more than inert substances, implying within them liveliness. I let their innate properties guide the process. This shifts them from merely being present, to having a strong physical material presence within eXe. An object has no voice until you engage with it; by drawing the viewer into the surface, I give the materials a voice.

Immaterial Gestures series - 2019 Crushed glass beads made in China, scrap dressmaking fabric, ink, Ink, glue, washing-up cloth, insulation tape, silver leaf, embodied traces of time/ labour/exertion/creative process and acrylic on canvas 18 × 18 cm / 25 x 25 cm

Biography

Bev Butkow (b. 1967) started making art in her mid-40s and is now a full-time artist grounded in the seriousness of her responsibility as a maker, communicator and social actor. Passionate about life-long learning, she is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at Wits University, Johannesburg on a scholarship from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. To this challenge she brings a diversity of perspectives from her varied life experiences, like corporate and artistic careers, community involvement, academia and role as a mother and wife. Deeply committed to social engagement and education, she co-founded a library in rural Limpopo and works actively on the board and management committee of 11 schools.

Butkow will exhibit at the 2022 Dakar Biennale and has exhibited at 1-54 London, Cape Town & Joburg Art Fairs and Wits Art Museum. Curated exhibitions include Tactile Visions-Woven at Turbine Art Fair, and The Art of Lithography: a collaborative expression of LL Editions at Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg. She is represented by Guns & Rain and her work is housed in local and international collections.

Butkow has presented at numerous academic conferences, participated in academic workshops and is published in the digital journal [...] Ellipses Journal for Creative Research.

Her creative home is the Bag Factory Artist Studios, blocks away from where her grandfather sold eggs at the Fresh Produce Market in the 60s. Inspired by the only city in which she’s lived, Butkow lives with her husband and four children in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Curriculum Vitae Awards, grants & selections 2021 BodyIQ2021 Symposium, Berlin (forthcoming) 2020 Recipient of Art: An Essential Need, artandaboutafrica 2019 Recipient Andrew W Mellon: Governing Intimacies (GI) Project

Solo exhibition 2015 m/other, Lizamore & Associates, Johannesburg Selected Biennials 2022 14th Dak’Art Biennial, titled 'Ndaffa / Forging / Out of the Fire, Senegal 2020 Pre-Biennial World Textile Art Online, Santiago, Chile

Dakar,

Selected Art Fairs & group exhibitions 2021 Bag Factory 30 Years: So Far, The Future, FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg 2020 Darkest Before Dawn: Art in a Time of Uncertainty, Ethan Cohen KuBe, New York 2020 Tactile Visions–Woven, Curater Prof Sharlene Kahn, Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg 2016, 2020 Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2019 1-54, London 2019 Latitudes Art Fair, Johannesburg 2018 The Art of Lithography: a collaborative expression of LL Editions, Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg 2017, 2018 Joburg Art Fair 2018 Sister Sister, National Arts Festival, Makhanda 2017 AKAA Art Fair, Paris 2016 Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Awards Top 100 exhibition, Kempton Park District Six 50th Commemorative Print Exchange Portfolio Project, District Six Museum, Cape Town

scholarship

2019 Narrative Writing for the Humanities, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2019 African Studies Journal writing retreat 2018 Africa’s top 20 new and exciting talent, Joburg Art Fair 2016 Johannesburg Council Chamber Totem Public Art Competition 2016 Post-Its, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, Supported by Sokol Foundation, Hayman Foundation, University of California at San Diego, Los Angeles and Davis 2015 Merit Award, SA Taxi Foundation Art Award 2015 Fresh Produce, Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg 2015 Winner, Assemblage Postcard Project competition Residencies 2020 Nirox Sculpture Park, Cradle of Mankind, South Africa 2019 L’Air Paris Publications 2020 [...] Ellipses Journal for Creative Research. 2020 Special edition “Embodied Methodologies, Creative Research in the Global South” Gallery representation Guns & Rain

Group exhibitions at a variety of galleries including Guns & Rain, Bag Factory, Kalashnikovv, Nirox Project Space, 99Loop, Gallery Noko, Fried Contemporary

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Curriculum Vitae - cont

Publications 2020 [...] Ellipses Journal for Creative Research. 2020 Special edition “Embodied Methodologies, Creative Research in the Global South” http:///www.ellipses.org.za/project/embodied-entanglementsentangled-embodiments Formal and informal education 2018–2021 Candidate Master of Fine Arts, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, under supervisor Dr Jessica Webster 2016–2017 Honours cum laude in Art History, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 1985–1991 B.Com, B.Acc, CA(SA), H.Dip.Tax, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2020 Drawing meditation with Katherine Bull 2019 Narrative Writing under Dr Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon 2019 Research trip, TextileLab, Tillburg, Netherlands Ongoing Mentorships with Nina Barnett (MAFA, University of Illinois, Chicago); Usha Seejarim, MAFA (Wits University, Johannesburg); Kim Lieberman, (MAFA, Wits University, Johannesburg) Paper making at Phumani Paper Archive Mill, University of Johannesburg

Conference presentations 2019 Material Narratives: Representations of public and private histories in cloth conference, University of Johannesburg 2019 Wits School of Arts Postgraduate Research Showcase, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2018 Tobetsa: a huddling, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2016 South African Research Chair in Southern African Art and Visual Culture conference 2016 WiCDS Decolonising Feminism 2016 UNISA School of Arts conference Selected community involvement Ongoing Established and ongoing support for a children’s library in Ponelopele in Botlokwa, Limpopo 2015–2021 Board, Management Committee member for 11 schools in Johannesburg 2015–2021 Chair, IT Steering Committee for 11 schools in Johannesburg 2020 Artmask for Kindness project 2018–2019 Bag Factory Project Selection Committee 2018 Mentor to David Koloane Painting Award winners 2018 Collaboration with Save the Children South Africa through a limited edition of handmade collector’s bags Contact details bevbutkow@gmail.com +27-83-378-1981 Instragram bevbutkow

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