The group show Speaking Back focuses on artists who have, through their work, created provocative and deliberative spaces from which women can speak back to perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs that impact on personal and political circumstances.

The themes that emerge suggests that they are engaged massively, visibly, loudly, and dramatically with the use of narration as an empowering practice. Narrative and the telling of stories in a visual language creates in us a space for imagination, recognition, and empathy, and this is an essential component to understanding self and other as currently experienced.

Artists include, among others: Candice Breitz, Virginia Chihota, Ivy Chemutai Ng’ok, Otobong Nkanga, Nkiru Oparah and Tracey Rose. 

Natasha Becker was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and came to New York in 2003 in search of adventure and a PhD in Art History. After teaching contemporary art history courses at the School of Visual Arts and the New School University for a couple of years, she joined the Research and Academic Program at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in 2007. At the Clark she worked closely with the Director to develop and manage a program of new and exciting international art collaborations. In 2009 she launched an International Video Art Festival in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in partnership with artists and a community of local residents and College students. She curated the inaugural exhibition and worked with a committee to select and invite emerging curators to lead subsequent festivals. Becker returned to Brooklyn, New York in 2013 and began working on independent curatorial projects that reflect her interest in contemporary art, the work and lives of women artists, as well as aspects of her life in Africa and the United States. Thus far she has curated exhibitions of mostly South African artists that include Dineo Seshee Bopape, Khanyisile Mbongwa, Marlene Dumas, Pamela Phatisimo Sunstrum, Senzeni Marasela, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Nandipha Mntambo and Zanele Muholi among others.

Opening at Goodman Gallery Cape Town on 21 May 2015 at 6pm