Artist Mary Sibande, courtesy of the the Sharjah Art Foundation.
Mary Sibande engages counter- historical narratives and the language of dress to animate the stories of South African women and critique western imperialist depictions of their lives.
How can materials and forms associated with racial oppression be subverted to oppose their original meaning? Can art help us reimagine difficult pasts in ways that allows us to heal in the present? To find out, listen this episode where Mary Sibande is in conversation with SB15 curator Hoor Al Qasimi. At Sharjah, Sibande installed a work called A Reverse Retrogress: Scene 1 (2013). Featuring a domestic worker standing before a purple sculpture, the work references the 1989 Purple Rain anti-apartheid protest in Cape Town. It is on view at Al Hamriyah Studios, Sharjah till 11 June 2023.
