All That She Carried is a large-scale exhibition at Latitudes Centre for the Arts (LCA) in celebration of Women’s Month.

The group exhibition borrows its name from the title of Tiya Alicia Miles's New York Times bestseller. The African American historian "traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a testament to people who are left out of the archives." It creates a perfect springboard into an exploration of the current status quo (the emotional, mental and physical tolls and/or tools) of women artists working and living in South Africa.

The exhibition explores two core themes:

Women in Progress
In a world hyper-focused on the idea of completeness, All That She Carried is a timely visual pause through the transitional phases of South African women manoeuvering through the complexities of womanhood.

The exhibition positions itself as a careful unraveling, layer by layer, of the ways in which women intuitively question who they are and what they are becoming by embracing the ‘work in progress’ - the silent moments of imperfection and incompletion that are necessary ground for revelations and rebirth.

The monolithic stereotype of women as “ever complete” is limiting in that it doesn’t account for the varying stages women often undergo to become better versions of themselves. It assumes an arrival, rarely questioning the journey.

Women in Motion
The journey is particularly important when reviewing the archive and the lack of representation of women in the historical art canon. This rings particularly true for Black women artists and women artists of colour who have borne, and continue to bear, the brunt of racism, sexism and, in some cases, homophobia.

In essence, the exhibition pays homage to the figurative and literal tools at women’s disposal that have shaped who they are and hold space for all that they carry. All That She Carried is about the struggle of holding on to parts of our history or ourselves while progressing forward in self discovery.

More information on the event can be found here.