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majena mafe

 

email:   [email protected]

insta:    https://www.instagram.com/stitchtongue/

             https://www.instagram.com/majenamafe/

Hi I’m an artist and writer, and have been most all of my life. I have played and made and studied and researched and made and played through many threads of fascination. I am passionately interested in women’s voices that erupt at the edge of reason. I see/hear these as unacknowledged wisdoms and pieces of knowledge. I understand these as ‘other’ oraculars. I am at present writing womens ‘conversational poetry’ many pieces are on this site paired with image based pieces some stitched. I champion the monsterous. I am also working on a large text about searching for the missing sound in language – love. I am interested not only in what can be made said but in how that saying, that voice, is made.


At present I live at the base of a beautiful mountain range in the south of France, on land they call Occitania. A place haunted by wise ones with ‘other’ beliefs and relationship to the land, it is a place of wonders, mysteries, and horrors … and before that, way before that, it was a place where small bone amulets of feminine sacredness were secreted away in caves and in the earth. And before then there were the cave bears and the mammoths and the Cambrian period.


In this place I nestle down and stitch-write-make and wag my tongue. I hope you enjoy my journey. It is a conversation.


 

* Doctor of Philosophy (trans disciplinary – sound, film, text) 2012

Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Australia
Research – Soundage a practice-led approach to Gertrude Stein, sound and GenerativeLanguage.
Creative work – Soundage a digital Opera for 25 Voices.
The Block, QUT, Brisbane
 

* Masters of Philosophy (creative writing) 2007

Deans Award for Excellence 
University of Queensland, Brisbane Australia
Research thesis – Sounding the Ineffable – The pre-Socratic notion of Subtle Light, MysticalTestimonies and Brilliance in Gertrude Stein’s Song.
Creative work/text – Sounding the Other Light … a biography. 
 

* Masters of Fine Arts (painting-instillation) 2000

Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Australia
Research thesis – Grappled Steps in the Making of a Practice.
Creative work – Grappled Making Exhibition. 
 

* Bachelors Degree in Visual Arts (with Honours)1994 

Canberra School of Art, Canberra University, Canberra Australia 

9 tiny-tales about me


* I’m always listening for the sound of things, I think it resides at the edge of what we think of as known


* The best thing I ever did was give birth to my daughter


* I write odd stories in odd sound-shaped words and phrases
* My muses are from the deep past
* Gertrude Stein is my rock, as are the Black mountains where I live
* In my dreams I make bone needles
* I think-make to help me find the answers to the questions I am asking
* Following on from where I am, lead leads me where I will be
* My primary aim is unknotting the knots. I believe there is lots to undo … and lots to make new again

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