Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest at South London Gallery

This unflinching new show has been organised in collaboration with the V&A and brings together photography by individuals and collectives in a group show. Described as urgent and political, the photography explores feminism and activism across the globe, recording major events like the 2020 anti-rape protests in Bangladesh, unrest in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody and reactions to the US Supreme Court overturning of Roe versus Wade, limiting women’s access to abortions and even making them illegal in some states. 

Hannah Starkey’s trio of portraits were commissioned to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement last year and depict three women who were instrumental to the peace process in their own ways: Anne Carr, part of the Good Friday agreement team; Bronagh Hinds, co-founder of the Women’s Coalition; and Margaretta Ruth D’Arcy, who ran a pirate radio station from her kitchen and was jailed for her protest graffiti. 

Sethembile Msezane’s Chapungu – The Day Rhodes Fell is one of the most memorable and best-composed images of the show. A woman stands, her covered face directed towards the camera, her arms outspread with wing adornments, the perspective suggesting her arm is lifting the crane that is unseating a weathered statue from its plinth. Msezane embodied a Zimbabwean bird, Chapungu, which had visited her in a recurring dream while the statue of Cecil Rhodes was removed from the University of Cape Town in 2015, following months of protests. She describes the four hours spent on a plinth to capture the image as a kind of possession by the bird, its spirit working through her in a way she didn’t understand: “The person in that image is not me.”

Another highlight is the work of Mari Katayama, who realised her vision to create high heels that she could comfortably wear on her prosthetic legs while performing. In 2022, the “Mari” shoes were custom made with Italian designer Sergio Rossi and two photographs show Mari wearing them. It’s an entrancing story.

The exhibition is a direct call to galvanise fourth-wave feminism and well worth seeing for the fascinating people it depicts and the stories it tells.