Senzeni Marasela at Art on Paper
by Robyn Sassen
Since the final years of her Fine Arts degree at Wits in the late 1990's, Senzeni Marasela has become increasingly prominent in the visual arts arena. Her work is consistently critically engaging and intelligently focused. 'Theodorah and other women', an exhibition of linocuts, proves no exception.
The four distinct series and three stand-alone prints on exhibition were printed by Tim Foulds at the Artist Proof Studio, and the images are pristine. Marasela has engaged in fairly novel techniques for this exhibition. In the past, we've seen her deriving images from the media, sandblasting text and images onto mirror surfaces and working with photo-serigraphy and lithography. We've also seen her embroidering and beading surfaces, and using herself as the subject of photographs. The autographic mark-making in this exhibition presents a new and valid outlet for her ideas.
There are many highlights in this exhibition, attesting to this young artist's skill. Summit Girls and Virgins is a series of thin vertical panels in which Marasela comments on so-called Africanised images of women, some of her caricatures are evocative of Picasso's imaging of women. This series faces another in the venue: 10 landscape-formatted images vertically ranged entitled Remembering Sarah.
The latter offers a gloss on the life of Sarah Baartman, a Khoisan woman famously 'othered' in the early 19th Century. Baartman herself is given a profound sense of celebratory dignity in each sequence of the story, and though Marasela draws some of the latter images from political cartoons of the time, she divests these images of their horrible showcase status and Baartman, rendered much larger than her captors, takes on an iconic and peaceful attitude. Perhaps this is due to the pared-down quality of the linocuts, often representing Baartman with no arms, rendering her like some primordial bird, stolid and immovable in construction. In this series, as in others, Marasela's line is almost diagrammatic, yet still descriptive.
The evocative power of this line is notably evident in Theodorah I, II and III. These shaped linocuts are apparently portraits of the artist's mother. Bold and direct in an understanding of the woman's form, ensconced in clothing, in positions of prostration and mourning, these three images are the most moving works on show.
Marasela's mother suffers from bipolar schizophrenia. In 2003, Marasela commented 'I recall� deep shame� when it came to speaking about my mother� her illness was never explained to us as children. We have had to piece together what made her an absence in our childhood memories'. With simple white lines incised into the lino, the tale told by Marasela of sadness, absence and degradation, in the ponderous bulk of this woman's body, is deep and convincing, yet succinct.
An untitled series on another wall consists of 13 panels. Each panel comprises three images, vertically ranged. Characters are represented here, offering a narrative which is obscure and clearly personal to the artist. It is here that we see echoes of the type of linework and representation found in graphic platforms like Bitterkomix. Working with the allowances and limitations of the medium, Marasela's line does not become descriptive, but provides a guttural level of emotion to the often anthropomorphic characters presented.
The series of works on this show generate a lot more momentum than the single works and the exhibition as a whole holds its own well. 'Theodorah and other women' becomes a prism through which Marasela examines her personal experiences as a daughter, conjoined with her more universal understanding of what it is to be a woman.
Opened: September 10
Closed: October 1
Art on Paper
8 Main Road, Melville
Tel: (011) 726 2234
Email: info@artonpaper.co.za
Hours: Tue � Sat 10am � 5pm
