Mary Sibande: A Reverse Retrogress Scene 1 at Sharjah Biennial 15: Al Shuwaihean, Sharjah. United Arab Emirates.

Mary Sibande engages counterhistorical narratives and the language of dress to animate the stories of South African women and critique western imperialist depictions of their lives. 

A Reverse Retrogress: Scene 1 (2013) features her alter ego, Sophie, whose many incarnations speak to Sibande’s mother’s and grandmother’s experiences under apartheid. In this work, Sophie takes on the cultural role of a maid while facing a purple figure surrounded by a cloud of embryonic beings, the colour signifying the 1989 Purple Rain anti-apartheid protest in Cape Town. The assemblage reveals the tension between a colonial past and postcolonial present.