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Mary Sibande, born 1982, lives and works in Johannesburg. She obtained
a B-Tech degree in Fine Arts at the University of Johannnesburg in 2007.
In
Sibande's practice as an artist, she employs the human form as a
vehicle through painting and sculpture, to explore the construction of
identity in a postcolonial South African context, but also attempts to
critique stereotypical depictions of women, particularly black women in
our society.
The
body, for Sibande, and particularly the skin, and clothing is the site
where history is contested and where fantasies play out. Centrally, she
looks at the generational disempowerment of black women and in this
sense her work is informed by postcolonial theory, through her art
making. In her work, domestic setting acts as a stage where historical
psycho-dramas play out.
Sibande's
work also highlights how priviledged ideals of beauty and femininity
aspired to by black women discipline their body through rituals of
imitation and reproduction. She inverst the social power indexed by
Victorian costumes by reconfiguring it as a domestic worker's "uniform"
complexifying the colonial relationship between "slave" and "master" in
a post-aparheid context. The fabric used to produce uniforms for
domestic workers is an instantly recognizable sight in domestic spaces
in South Africa and by applying it to Victorian dress she attempts to
make a comment about history of servitude as it relates to the present
in terms of domestic relationships.
Profile
Artist's Statement on Sophie
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