Art Exhibitions

Marasela’s practice spans embroidery, textiles, and mixed-media installation, exploring the lives and histories of Black South African women through richly crafted material narratives. Central to the exhibition are her stitched blankets, which expand on her Failing series, along with other textile-based works that interweave personal and collective stories of endurance, memory, and intergenerational experience.

The Failing series grew out of a nearly two-decades-long durational performance in which Marasela, as her fictional alter ego Theodorah Mthetyane, wore red shweshwe dresses and woollen blankets while waiting for her husband Gebane, who had gone to seek work in Johannesburg. When the blankets became too heavy to wear, she repurposed their vivid yarn into stitched works, carrying forward the histories of migration, loss, and resilience. Red, her signature colour, evokes the “red dust” of rural landscapes, the red slag heaps of mining centres, and the weight of lives disrupted by forced and voluntary migrations; a symbol of endurance under oppressive conditions.

Through Two O’Clock, Marasela transforms fabric into storytelling, turning intimate and historical narratives into works of quiet, compelling power.

Address: 67 Loop Street, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa

Tel: +27 (0) 21 424 9985

Mon-Fri 09h00 - 17h00

Saturday 09h30 - 13h00

MORE EVENTS IN CAPE TOWN

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DAWID RAS GALLERY “SUBSTRATE/SUBSTRAAT” Participating: Luan Nel Opening: Saturday 14 February 2026 at 12:00 - 6 March 2026 View exhibition details...