I talked to Tamar Mason at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, surrounded by her first UK solo show. In what looks initially like paintings but are embroidered works, Mason explores the complexity of rural life in South Africa. Focused primarily on the history and landscapes of Mpumalanga, Mason’s home province, her works consider the impact of failing government services on local communities and the natural environment.
Why is your show called ‘Seeing Shadows’?
That references the legacy of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history, envisioning the lasting traces of discrimination. In several works, I recreate the outline of shadows – mine and those close to me – as they fall against the earth, rocks and grassland below, considering the thousands of years of cultures and peoples that have lived there before. These silhouettes also create a dialogue with the Indigenous rock paintings of the San people, created up to 30,000 years ago.
What has led you to use thread rather than paint?
I’ve always loved working with my hands, and have been particularly attracted to tactile things: carving into lino, embroidery, working with clay and with fabric are women’s traditions in South Africa, and seen as domestic rather than serious art – and I’ve always been interested in challenging that. I’ve also connected to those craft traditions by spending 15 years living in a rural areas and supporting women’s projects – working as a skills trainer and helping the women to set up small businesses and cooperatives.
Details from ‘Navigation’, 2024 – embroidery and beadwork on fabric, 192 x 125 cm
What are your materials?
I use cotton or polyester threads, and I work on high-quality, suiting fabrics. They’re for making men’s suits, so there’s a subversion in stitching into a male fabric. That also has a technical side, as the needle goes through it very easily, and it doesn’t crease, it’s very forgiving fabric to work on. I also use high-quality Czechoslovakian beads, as used by Ndebele makers, who work only with them – beads are not manufactured in South Africa. The ostrich egg beads come from handmade necklaces I buy in Botswana and then dismantle.
How do you go about sewing?
If a proper embroiderer saw my work, they’d be horrified, as I use just a few basic stitches – chain stitch, running stitch, blanket stitch, stem stitch – but manipulate and combine them in ways I shouldn’t. In a sense, I am painting or drawing with the thread. To get the colours, I’ll often take two threads from one skein and one from another. I have great fun getting it to look like a painting from a distance, getting 3D effects and shadows. I work so close up, I can’t see what I’m doing – I have to get further away every now and again to see what is going on. It’s all hand-stitched, I never use a machine. You have to be relaxed: if you pull too tightly the fabric creases, so you are forced into being relaxed.
‘Escarpment’, 2024 – embroidery and beadwork on fabric, 192 x 125 cm
Is that your shadow in ‘Escarpment’, along with a particularly painterly flower?
Yes, that’s my shadow. It is about how winds come up over the escarpment, and the importance environmentally of an escarpment. My partner and I spend time clearing alien trees on the mountains, and also just walking – the mountains go towards Mozambique – and you’d find the gladioli as part of the intact natural environment.
How did you make the fan?
That’s from a piece of fabric that I used to make a dress, twenty years ago. You can still get that design – African fabrics are so beautiful, and they have these objects of desire on them. The fan is also a bit of a joke about hot flushes and menopause…
‘Navigation’, 2024 – embroidery and beadwork on fabric, 192 x 125 cm
‘Navigation’ brings micro and macros scales together strikingly. What’s happening?
The moth wings at the front are suggestive of a landscape – a mountain that the figure is leaping off. That’s my daughter finding her way in the world – she has just graduated from University. The image of the other moth is taken from a cave painting – and it’s very unusual for moths to be depicted in rock art. Moths are night creatures and use the stars to navigate, the two constellations indicated by the ostrich eggs are the Southern Cross and the Belt of Orion. I had in mind Sylvia Plath’s ‘Morning Song’ (1960):
…All night, your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
‘Traces’, 2024 – embroidery and beadwork on fabric, 215 x 89 cm
Does that look more like a male shadow in ‘Traces’?
That’s my son – I use the people around me to get the shadows and silhouettes to do what I want. ‘Traces’ is about illegal mining. I used the colours of the soil they were digging up for the figure. There’s a map of the area and objects left behind by Zama Zamas, the illegal mining that sees thousands of men descending into disused mineshafts. They use glycerine and potassium permanganate to explode rock, salt and tartaric acid to clean the gold. The cigarettes are illegally imported from Zimbabwe – income from illegal cigarette sales is used to buy gold. There’s an old-fashioned gold panning bowl, headlamps with cheap Chinese batteries, and coffee. One incredible valley has beautiful rock paintings – and we found miners had graffitied text over them, meaning: ‘lightning doesn’t grow / we walk in the clouds / what are you men saying?’ Southern Sotho poetry has three paths: for your clan, immediate family, and for reciting on the long walk to the mines – ‘walking poetry’, which that probably was.
Recently, the police have been cordoning off the mineshafts, which might have three or four thousand men down them, and allowing no water or food down to ‘smoke them out’, as the Government puts it. The mining is illegal and incredibly dangerous, but it’s a failure of the Government and the economy that is responsible. It’s a tragedy for the environment, for the men involved, for the economy because of the lost taxes… it’s a downward spiral.
Top photo: Tamar Mason in ‘Seeing Shadows’ courtesy the Artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery
Tamar Mason: Seeing Shadows continues at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery to 15 Jan 2025. Images 3-5 Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London. © Tamar Mason 2024. Photography by Mark Blower.