kzn reviews

While partly a clever one-liner, the performance also revealed the artist in a deeply personal and vulnerable display. On a clothesline behind her, Dunn ‘aired’ her ‘laundry’, a series of images and texts that touched on her heritage and race; as such, the site of the performance partly became an installation. Following the painting of her body, Dunn rolled on a plastic sheet, leaving trace evidence of the act, the painted ‘canvas’ becoming a disturbing autopsy report on the event. The final ‘evidence’ was hung in the gallery, a sticky reminder of the perpetuation of racial violence.

Although Dunn’s work clearly references '70s body art, especially the likes of Stuart Brisely, her take on ‘colour’ is unique to the South African context. The remainder of the work on show explored further experiments into the ideas of ‘colour’ and racial separation. Her video piece Painted Portrait - Black shows Dunn again being coated in paint. The close-up of her face spluttering and choking back on the flood of ‘colour’ proved deeply emotive. Her paintings entitled Painted Portrait – Black and Painted Portrait – Green reveal the artist as a ‘coloured’ object, her face defined through contours of dripping paint. Dunn states: 'My mission is to re-interpret/re-invent racial labels given to us by political systems. I do this through my colour palette and my camera. For example I am labelled 'Coloured' (in South Africa)... I play with [this idea], strip it, cry it, celebrate it, have fun and re-invent it through performance and paintings until it has multiple definitions and experiences far from the racial connotations/discrimination. I do this by recording my experiments with paint, colour, concepts and my body'.