Mary Sibande’s latest exhibition, Let me tell you about Red, curated by Gcotyelwa Mashiqa, is now at the Durban Art Gallery. Mary Sibande’s phenomenal and memorable large-scale installations personify the colours of bruising – blue, purple and more recently red, as demonstrated through her alter-ego, Sophie, a life-size, personalised mannequin channelling Sibande and made in her likeness.
Through her imposing sculptures and life-like photographs, the Johannesburg artist ‘deconstructs’ the roles of women in South Africa as both individuals and in terms of race, gender and class inequity. Through her garments, attitude and environment, Sophie allows us a glimpse of life as a contemporary Black South African woman as she navigates the barrage of daily challenges.
We first meet the flamboyant, yet resolute, Sophie wearing the blue and white of a maid’s uniform, then she moved to a regal purple, signifying her political awakening, and most recently it is predominantly scarlet – demonstrating the impotent rage felt by many South Africans at democracy’s failure to improve the appalling living conditions of the majority of its citizens; and of the ongoing poverty and festering social, economic and racial divisions.
Born in 1982 in Barberton, South Africa, Mary Sibande graduated in 2007 from the University of Johannesburg, where she lives and works. In 2013 she won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, part of the prize for which was a touring exhibition across South Africa. Sibande’s work has been exhibited in the South African pavilion of the Venice Biennale (2010), the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2010), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rio de Janeiro (2011), the Lyon Biennale (2013), the British Museum (2016) and the MET Breuer, Metropolitan Museum of Art (2018).
Doors open from 9am to 3.30pm during the week and 9am to12pm on Saturdays. For more information contact the Durban Art Gallery on 031-311-2264/9.
