Award-winning artist and sculptor Nandipha Mntambo returns for her seventh exhibition at Stevenson gallery. The snake you left inside me joins Mntambo’s ongoing exploration of gender binaries, using paintings, sculpture and mono-prints to explore the interdependency between shadow and light. Combining gold-leaf and dark shades, Mntambo alludes to the intrinsic tensions in relationships and the non-binary nature of identities.

In The snake you left inside me the artist uses the essential musculature and side-to-side movements of snakes and the many myths about these animals, as an expression of the mechanics of illumination, illustrating the androgynous and shifting nature of identities.

From heralds of doom to life-givers, snakes feature prominently in different mythologies. In particular Mntmabo focuses her attentions on the hybrid and shape-shifting nature of the snake, inspired by the ancient Greek Echinda, a half-snake, half-woman creature referred to 'as the mother of monsters', a creature that is both maternal and lethal.

Opening event Sat Nov 25 from 10:00.