Ângela Ferreira's exhibition 'Slits are Girls' at The Showroom in London traces unexpected connections between punk in 1970s London and apartheid South Africa. Through photographs of the all-female punk band The Slits and South Africa's multiracial group National Wake, the show uses sculpture, sound, and archival research to map protest, gender politics, and sonic resistance across geographies and generations.
The exhibition matters because it reveals how rebellious energies and acts of resistance travel across time, place, and political contexts without flattening their distinct meanings. By linking punk's emergence in a collapsing industrial Britain to anti-apartheid defiance in South Africa, Ferreira challenges nostalgic readings of punk and highlights its enduring relevance for contemporary political and artistic expression.