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Mary Sibande premiered The Domba Dance (2019) in Kavi Gupta's booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2019, as part of the exclusive, curated Kabinett sector. Sibande's work explores issues related to post-Apartheid South Africa. This fiberglass and textile sculpture features Sibande's evolving character "Sophie," seen in all red, alongside a red, multi-headed dog, flanked by a ribbon of interlocked multi-colored arms.
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This installation reflects on the legacy, or aftermath, of Apartheid in South Africa. The work is a pseudo-psychological investigation, exploring a suppressed and yet ubiquitous emotion: anger. At the core of the work is the preservation of the heart. Among people who speak isiZulu, and more broadly iNguni, the heart is associated with a wide spectrum of emotions such as anger, impatience, and intolerance. The color red has many metaphorical associations, from spiritual to blood. According to a common Zulu expression, an angry person is a “red dog.” The emotive quality of anger relegates the individual to the realm of the animal, belonging outside humanity. There is also a nihilistic perception of anger; the emotion manifests in destruction, including that of the figure who harbors it.
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Mary Sibande
Ascension of the Purple Figure, 2016In this work, we see Sophie, Mary Sibande's avatar, stepping up onto a pedestal. She is in her purple phase, representing the spirit of constructive resistance encapsulated by the Purple Rain protests in South Africa, during which authorities sprayed protestors with purple ink from water cannons, intent on marking them so they could be arrested later. Purple is also a vague reference to clergy and royalty, two authoritarian forces in colonial Africa, but also two roles that would never have been afforded Sophie in times past. Here, she is adorned in her purple garb, ascending with dignity into her new position. Beneath her purple clothing, we can already see hints of her next phase: the red phase.
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Mary Sibande
Good is bad and bad is good, 2020Here we see Sophie, Mary Sibande's avatar, in her red phase, representative of many things, but especially blood and anger. Color is a fundamental aspect of Sibande's practice. She was born Black in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1982—part of the majority, yet oppressed by the institutionally white supremacist Apartheid system, which granted minority whites supreme political control. Sibande’s mother was a domestic worker, her uniform a standard, blue dress with white, lace apron and head scarf. Her father, dressed in green fatigues, served in the South African Army. When she was just seven years old, Sibande watched as the police turned water cannons filled with purple dye onto anti-Apartheid protestors days before national elections. The purple dye marked protesters for arrest, and indeed hundreds were rounded up and jailed. Yet, protestors commandeered one of the cannons and turned it on the governing party’s legislative offices. After the riot, graffiti around the city foretold, “The purple shall govern.” Six years later, Apartheid would officially end, but still today racial inequity is rampant in South Africa. Sibande expresses the frustration of contemporary Black South Africans with the color red, a choice stemming from the Zulu aphorism, “ie ukwatile uphenduke inja ebomvu,” meaning “he is angry, he turned into a red dog.”
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mary Sibande (b. 1982, South Africa) is a sculptor, painter, and installation artist whose work not only interrogates the current intersections of race, gender, and labour in South Africa, but continues to actively rewrite her own family’s legacy of forced domestic work imposed by the then-Apartheid state.
Through photography and sculpture, Sibande employs the human form as a vehicle for a focused critique of stereotypical depictions of women, especially Black women in South Africa. For Sibande, the body, and particularly how we clothe it, is the site where history is contested and where Sibande’s own fantasies can play out. Sibande’s counter-history takes the form of an alter-ego in her work, a persona by the name of Sophie, who is dressed in various uniforms that resemble those worn by domestic workers. Turning these dress styles into Victorian motifs, Sibande reanimates Sophie’s history in the ways her body is adorned and her occupation of the narratives that were stolen from and denied to her. This is not just a political act, but one of transformation, as Sophie takes on new incarnations unbound from the history of servitude and labor as it extends to present domestic relationships. Transitioning from blue to purple to red, Sibande introduces us not only to the many faces of herself and "Sophie," but to the complex personhoods of African women who continue to create worlds and narratives outside of the Western imperialist canon.
In newer works, we witness "Sophie" as the High Priestess becoming the space between two realms: between the past and future, between what has been and what could be. She is fleeting, a personification of mystery and spirit that is unknown to the rational world. In her work, Sibande offers insight into the past, present, and future, interpreting biblical and philosophical wise texts into personal visions and prophecy. The Priestess represents magic and possibility through ancient cultural practices associated with sorcery, the traditions of which continue into the present day. Most importantly, Sibande attempts to exploit supernatural forces by summoning the spiritual and medicinal role inherent to magic and its rituals, gestures, and languages.
Mary Sibande
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