Clothes define us in different ways: some of us create through garments distinctive uniforms for themselves that represent their social status or role in society; but there are specific clothing and colours that communicate a message to others, for example, wearing black during times of mourning expresses grief and sorrow. In Senzeni Mthwakazi Marasela's practice a red dress holds symbolic significance.
Born in 1977 in Thokoza, South Africa, the interdisciplinary artist is proficient in various forms of expression, such as performance, photography, video and printmaking. She also employs embroidery and textiles in her installations, often characterised by a compelling narrative power tackling social justice issues, displacement, and identity in relation to her own personal experiences in post-apartheid South Africa.
The protagonist of the project "Waiting for Gebane", for instance, is Marasela's fictional alter ego, Theodora Mthetyane. her husband, Gebane Hlongwane, gives her an Iseshweshwe dress as a parting gift before leaving their rural home to seek work in Johannesburg.
The Iseshweshwe dress is typically worn by married women in Xhosa culture and is prevalent in rural areas. Despite waiting for years, Gebane never returns, but Theodora keeps on wearing the dress every day as a symbol of her fidelity. Through Theodora, Marasela alludes to her mother's story and the experiences of many South African women during apartheid, so that the project assumes a collective meaning.
The red colour of the Iseshweshwe dress and the linen pieces hints at disruption and conflict in South Africa in the early 1900s, but also at a period of severe drought and at the red mine hills of industrialised cities like Johannesburg where men from the rural areas of South Africa were sent to work.
In a six-year-long performance (2013-2019), Marasela embodied Theodora's story and wore the dress daily, exploring themes of waiting, loneliness, and hope, discrimination and identification, and retelling through the red dress the story of the social disregard and abandonment lived by women in South Africa. The project, "Waiting for Gebane," culminated in Marasela's inaugural solo exhibition at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), Cape Town, in 2020.
"For the past twenty years Marasela has developed an intriguing as much as an urgent body of work that essentially addresses the social disregard and abandonment of women in Apartheid South Africa," Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, states about the artist.
"Using forms and materials in ingenious ways that allow viewers to get a sense of the trauma inflicted on Black people through the lives of South African women and working primarily with durational performance, her work centralises the micro-histories of women in her family and the experience of many others. These include the biographies of icons such Sarah Baartman and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as well as fictional and mythological women such as Charles Dicken's Miss Havisham and Homer's Penelope."
The red dress is among the works recently acquired for the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen after Marasela won the new K21 Global Art Award, presented by the Freunde der Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Friends of K20K21).
The K20K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen – North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf is an internationally renowned museum for modern, postwar and contemporary art divided in two venues, K20 and K21.
The panel for the award comprised Doryun Chong (M+, Hong Kong); Koyo Kouoh (Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Capetown); Omar Kholeif (Sharjah Art Foundation, Government of Sharjah, UAE); Oluremi C. Onabanjo, (The Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Jochen Volz (Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo). Each member of the jury nominated two artists who work in various forms of media. The list of the ten nominated artists was then presented to the Friends of K20K21 Selection Committee, that chose the winning artist. The winner's artworks are then acquired by the Friends of K20K21, and go on permanent loan to the collection of K20K21, so, hopefully, Marasela's newly acquired pieces will be on display at the institution soon.
"I am delighted to welcome the voice and the experience of Senzeni Marasela into our collection," Prof. Susanne Gaensheimer, Director of K20K21 stated in a press release. "Marasela is an artist and a feminist who has achieved so much to give a voice and a visibility to the life and struggles of women living in post-apartheid South Africa. Her work is not only about women and not only about specitic context of South Africa – it captures the emotions and the experiences of something far greater and far more universal."
Image credits for this post
Senzeni Marasela, Ijeremani Lam. © Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 2023. Acquired by Friends of K20K21.
Senzeni Marasela, Falling Series/Waiting for Gebane. © Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 2023. Acquired by Friends of K20K21.
Senzeni Marasela, Waiting for Gebane. © Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 2023. Acquired by Friends of K20K21.
Senzeni Marasela, Falling Series III. © Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 2023. Acquired by Friends of K20K21.
Senzeni Marasela © Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 2023.
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