Context (CMS Context)
Presented by The Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. An acquisition project to build a collection of modern and contemporary work on paper from Australia, Canada and South Africa was undertaken over 2011-13 with the support of a grant under The Art Fund's RENEW programme. The collection was developed with the expert advice and generous assistance of Annie Coombes and Norman Vorano in relation to South African and Inuit artists respectively. Khadija Carroll, Anita Herle and Diana Wood Conroy also contributed to the selection process. Obtained from Robyn Nesbitt, Artist Proof Studio Curator, The Bus Factory, 3 President Street, West Entrance, Newtown Cultural Precinct, Newtown/ PO Box 664, Newtown, 2113, Gauteng, Johannesburg.

Senzeni Marasela (b. 1977) is a highly regarded Johannesburg artist. Her work has been extensively shown within South Africa, the US and Europe (though not as yet in the UK). She works particularly in linocut and needlepoint, producing prints and fabric works that address women’s experiences of trauma and nurture, and passages from rural homes to the city.

This linocut references the artist’s mother, Theodora, who suffers from bipolar schizophrenia and was absent for most of her childhood. Marasela’s works featuring her mother Theodora were referenced by Nessa Leibhammer and Musha Nehluveni, in 'Transformations: women’s art from the late nineteenth century to 2010', an exhibition of women’s art from the collection of the Johannesburg Art Gallery,(curated by Nessa Leibhammer, Reshma Chhiba and Musha Neluheni)
1 Aug 2010 to 31 Jan 2011 at the Johannesburg Art Gallery). They suggested that Thoedora's absence 'resulted in a sense of disconnection and dislocation with her mother. Her artwork is therefore characterised by a search for this mother figure, and we see Theodora making appearances in much of her work. In Marasela’s performance pieces, she often incorporates dolls, which she alternately deconstructs and reassembles. These dolls become her children and, in essence, her mode of investigating the mother and child relationship... [and] ...allude to an occurrence, which is essentially South African. This absence of mothering is perhaps a reference to the South African experience where black domestic workers left their own children behind in rural areas to care for the children of white employers.' Details taken from http://www.archivalplatform.org/news/entry/transformations/, accessed 2014.8.24

Event Date 23/8/2014
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Linocut by Senzeni Marasela titled 'The comforter in conversation with Theodora', 2009. Edition 3/10. Condition: Excellent
Event Date 23/8/2014
Author: maa