Venus and the Fish Wife: Gender Politics in Carol Hayward Fell's Early Ceramics

The works of KwaZulu-Natal ceramist, Carol Hayward Fell (born 1953), while in a number of public collections in South Africa and recognised through prestigious awards, have not hitherto been examined in depth. This article addresses this gap through a focus on works the artist made in the 1980s and early 1990s, considering how these might be interpreted in light of gender politics. Hayward Fell is contextualised as being among a first generation of South African artists working in feminist frameworks as well as those who resisted Anglo-Orientalist paradigms in ceramics. Through analysis of a selection of examples, it is argued that her works transgress gendered understandings about ceramics, most especially ideas about “decoration”, and that these critical engagements with her medium and inherited constructions about it are coupled with incisive commentaries about gendered experiences in social life.