Dr Yolanda van der Vyver
The South African Journal of Art History
Depicting sexual violence in art: from “heroic rape” to Artivism
Greek mythology abounds with sexual violence and since ancient times, the depiction of rape and war has been a central theme in art history. The underlying themes of oppression in mythology are still what perpetuates and enforces today’s culture of Gender Based Violence.
The practice of Bride Kidnapping, for instance, which is a central theme in Roman legend and subsequent artistic depictions, still occurs in various parts of the world today, especially in patriarchal societies. In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirmed faith in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women, but women still had an inferior status in life.
The Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s aimed at addressing women’s oppression through activism, and protest art during that movement was already a collaboration between art and activism, although the term “artivism” was only coined at the end of the twentieth century.
In South Africa, with the advent of democracy and the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996, the binary concept of gender was expanded to provide constitutional protection to LGBTQ+ persons by including sexual orientation in the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.
BIOGRAPHY
Yolanda van der Vyver holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of the Free State, a master’s degree in architecture and an honours degree in French from the University of Pretoria. She has been a practicing architect since 1996, is a founding member of Y and K Architects and passed the Fellowship Exam of the Association of Arbitrators. She spent a semester at the Centre for the Study of Law and Religion as the Emory University–Halle Institute Fulbright South Africa Distinguished Chair and was a guest editor of Canopy Forum, its digital publication. She is currently the Editor of the South African Journal of Art History. Her interests include interdisciplinary study and the convergence of law, religion, and architecture.