Mother.Monster.Stitch by Hannalie Taute Reimagines the Family Portrait at Berman Contemporary Gallery

In Mother. Monster. Stitch., South African artist Hannalie Taute transforms the family portrait into a site of rebellion and repair. Working with discarded rubber, thread, and vintage photographs, she pierces and re-stitches domestic mythologies. Curated by Karolien van Zyl, the exhibition reveals the monstrous feminine not as horror but vitality – a tactile language of humour, resistance, and becoming. Here’s everything you need to know.

About the Exhibition

In Mother. Monster. Stitch., South African artist Hannalie Taute pierces and re-stitches the rituals of womanhood –
weddings, motherhood, composure – transforming them into something raw, irreverent, and alive.

Working with discarded rubber, thread, and vintage photographs, Taute rewrites domestic mythologies one puncture at a time. Her embroidered figures – wives, mothers, and daughters – oscillate between tenderness and menace, humour and unease. The embroidery turns familiar rituals of respectability inside out; masks grin too wide and flowers bloom where they shouldn’t.

Mother. Monster. Stitch. reimagines the monstrous feminine not as fear, but as vitality – a language of becoming that insists on the power of imperfection and the intelligence of the hand.

The exhibition is on show until 28 February 2026 at the Berman Contemporary Gallery.