Contemporary South African
Berni Searle
Video/Performance Artist
CHARACTERISTICS:
- Complex layers
- A desire to belong
- Concerned with the complexities of identity and belonging in relation to
- Language
- Race
- Colour
- Gender
- History of South Africa
- Reflects different racial and political experiences
- Wants to provide a space for illusion and fantasy
- The presence and absence of in the body points to the idea that one’s identity is not static
and constantly in a state of flux
ARTWORKS:
Snow White
9 minutes from the side of a darkened gallery is initially quite a
disconcerting experience. There are 2 large screens on either side
of the room. Broth project Searle kneeling naked in a bright
spotlight; the one is filmed face-on, the other from above.
As flour begins to fall on her head, followed by a steady stream of water, she sits stoic and
unflinching. She starts to gather up the surrounding mess and kneads it into dough.
The cynical apartheid regime left South Africa with a trauma that cannot be avoided
as a context for the work. In the frontal depiction the action is archaic looking sense of
sculptural physicality, while centrally from above gives her gestures a painterly two-
dimensional quality. In an individual search for what identity can be beyond physical
categorising of colour, gender etc.
The issue of ‘perspective’ is not coincidental. At one level, life is purely about perspective.
What we choose to believe is true for us. Searle's use of a split screen reminds us of this fact. It
also alludes to the shifting nature of reality; as we choose a different lens, so the view
changes and perception alters to something new.
She often uses her body as a focus of investigation. Snow White sees Searle's body
transformed in colour by the finely milled white grains that raise up both colonial roots and
issues of race. Gender expectations are also strongly evoked through both the submissive
kneeling posture and kneading, which echoes the actions of generations of women ancestors.
, Colour Me Series
“Using her own body as subject and point of departure, Searle
experiments with the surface of her skin, allowing it to be clad in layers of
coloured and aromatic spices, leaving her bodily imprint on drifts of
spices on the floor, or staining certain areas of her body with various
substances, suggesting trauma, or damage. The spices are in part a
reference to interbreeding with the local inhabitants and slaves brought
from other parts of Africa, produced children of mixed race. Searle's work
confronts head-on this history and the obsession with racial
classification which ensued
The series 'Colour Me' is a play on the racial classification
'coloured' under apartheid legislation. In the work, she chose to
cover herself with various colours - red, yellow, white, brown, in
an attempt to resist any definition of identity which is static or can
be placed into neat categories. Placing herself or her body in the
work, exposes other aspects of her identity, for example, gender.
Exposing herself therefore involves a process of claiming and
points to the idea that there are a range of axis that inform
identity which are inter-connected, determining relationships of
dependency and domination in any given context.
About to Forget
This work looks at the intermediate space of memory
where a sense of return and a sense of loss are
simultaneously invoked. The process of forgetting
entwines both the presence and absence of memory, and
a series of gradually fading after-images of people and
events that linger in the mind. Searle uses a handful of
small black and white photographs of three generations
of her family as the point of departure for a metaphoric
and poetic reflection on a fractured past.
Silhouettes of groups of family members in the photographs, cut out of red crêpe paper, float
in warm water. Their colour bleeds as the water moves, the figures become transparent and
residual, and the structured and defined shapes slowly losing their form amidst the swirls of
red ink. The fragile figures retain their shape while colour bleeds out into the environment. The
figures take on an almost monumental stature, although they are threatened by the
environment. In the video the swirling of the water as the plug is pulled, and also the menacing
drip of the tap as the process unfolds. She addresses her personal identity. The photographs
belong to her mother who was rejected by her grandmother when she married a non-Muslim
and these photographs are the remaining connection with her fractured past.
The work is a metaphoric and poetic reflection on a fractured past which leaves an indelible
mark behind, onto which future generations can project their own interpretation. The process
of forgetting interweaves both the presence and absence of memory, and, in between, a series
of fading after-images of people and events that linger in the mind.
