FloraVenus: Her Woven Metamorphosis

• Venue: NWU Gallery (North-West University, Building F16G, Hoffman Street, Potchefstroom. 2530)
• Opening date: 13th August 2025
• Closing date: 26 September 2025

Curated by Joy Dayile and co-curated by Sandro Trapani, FloraVenus: Her Woven Metamorphosis is a tapestry of divine archetypes, ancestral wisdom, and corporeal truth. Inspired by two Roman goddesses—Flora and Venus—this exhibition tells a story of feminine duality: soft and fierce, rooted and volatile, nourishing and alluring.

Flora, goddess of spring, symbolizes gentle cycles of growth and renewal. Her festival, the Floralia, celebrated vitality with vivid clothing, roses, and performative joy. Venus reigns over love and beauty, but also will, conquest, and change. As Mary Beard reminds us, Venus embodies agency—not just charm, but force.

These archetypes are not in opposition—they are in union. The exhibition stages their interplay as a textile of mythic memory, bodily transformation, and social perception. Weaving becomes a medium and metaphor: a structure that holds softness, a thread that connects past and present.

Central to this narrative is the metamorphosis of the feminine body—biological, emotional, and societal. Simone de Beauvoir describes womanhood as paradoxical: a body praised and policed, empowered and scrutinized. FloraVenus honours this complexity, inviting the viewer to witness transformation through memory, texture, and myth.

With textile art, philosophical reflection, and ancestral storytelling, this garden in motion blooms with identity. The goddesses walk beside us—not as distant figures, but as foremothers. They guide us with rose-stained hands and fire-warmed eyes through our own metamorphosis.