Stories of Our Soil is a collection of artworks showing at The Melrose Gallery during Womxn’s Month, August 2021. This collection is an amalgamation of womxnhood, nature, our place within it, and how both have been exploited by our society. From an inner space, each of these artists has created raw portrayals of the problems that a colonial, capitalist-structured society has placed on our shoulders but, importantly, each also conveys a message of hope on how to overcome these societal ills.
Both womxn and nature have been viewed as tools and objects to be used in the pursuit of fame, fortune, money and power. Our consent is discarded; our intimacy violated. Our rights are up for debate in public forums. We are told to stay in our lanes, to accept the roles that society has bestowed upon us, not to rock the boat, not to question authority, to buy the newest products, and to accept with meek passivity the colonial echoes that continue to affect us down the ages.
We hear this incessant chatter, born from a history of colonial capitalism that has percolated through time, but we have missed out on listening to our human spirit in favour of the clamouring tintinnabulation of capitalist greed, racial disparity, and individualistic fame and glory.
Our role as womxn has been dictated. Our planet has been poisoned. And our bodies have been used. We must confront the subjugated role that we have been allotted by society. We want to take this coming Womxn’s Month to explore our shared humanity — that which connects each of us through both time and space — and examine how we can rectify how it has gone wrong. Womxn’s Month was intended as a starting point for reflection; we must take the time to reflect on the stories of our soil through texts, images and history.