Listings(s)
Mine Over Matter
Usha Seejarim at Gallery MOMOUsha Seejarim's solo exhibition of monochromatic paintings and drawings on paper uses Johannesburg's mining history as a narrative starting point for an exploration of personal and collective memory, repression and the relationship between memory and place.
The artist will give walkabouts of the show on Saturday November 21 at 10am and Friday November 27 at 2pm.
04 November 2009 - 30 November 2009
'Venus at Home'
Usha Seejarim at NWU Gallery'Venus at Home' is an intensely personal project, in which the artist aims to explore the places she finds herself in and the various roles she undertakes.
Explaining her previous work Seejarim states, 'The trajectory of my work shows a fascination with the everyday. Subsequent works have used household and ordinary objects like toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, bus tickets, soap bars, kwiklocks (plastic clips that close bread packet), earbuds, stoep polish and safety pins. The everyday features also in video works where the practice of daily activities has been explored. Works have been made about daily travel to work and back, washing dishes, mowing the lawn and making roti'.
Henry Lefebvre, in Clearing the Ground, 1961 describes a housewife as being immersed in the everyday, needing an escape, and a mathematician being distant from and needing a return to the everyday. 'This phenomenon of ‘escape from’ and ‘return to’ the everyday co-exist in my life as a house/home-keeper and artist. It is this dual relationship that I wish to explore in this body of work', says Seejarim.
'As a home-maker/housewife/mother of two, and an artist, I seem to straddle between daily chores like washing the dishes or changing diapers to the seemingly glamorous act of making art. These two distinctly female roles in my own life came together in this body of work that uses ordinary household objects as materials to create a series of sculptures and installations'.
Seejarim is a young woman of Indian descent whose experience is as a South African. Yet her artistic voice has been nurtured and informed by the rich heritage of her (South African) diasporic Indian environment and culture. She asks pertinent questions about identity, nationality, culture and the concept of ‘home’- but rather than seek universal truisms that society so often uses in rhetoric, Seejarim looks to this project for personal resolution. Her work explores issues of identity and is informed by a fascination with the apparent mundane and the ordinary. This body of work extends Seejarim’s previous preoccupation with the ‘ordinary’ and explores her position in her various persona and roles – that of an Indian/ South African woman, a wife, mother, home keeper and artist.
06 February 2014 - 20 March 2014
'Venus at Home'
Usha Seejarim at Johannesburg Art GalleryUsha Seejarim's 'Venus at Home', a touring museum exhibition, opens at Johannesburg Art Gallery.
Venus at Home is an intensely personal project, in which the artist aims to explore the places she finds herself in and the various roles she undertakes.
Explaining her previous work Seejarim states, 'The trajectory of my work shows a fascination with the everyday. Â Subsequent works have used household and ordinary objects like toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, bus tickets, soap bars, kwiklocks (plastic clips that close bread packet), earbuds, stoep polish and safety pins. The everyday features also in video works where the practice of daily activities has been explored. Works have been made about daily travel to work and back, washing dishes, mowing the lawn and making roti'.
'As a home-maker/housewife/mother of two, and an artist, I seem to straddle between daily chores like washing the dishes or changing diapers to the seemingly glamorous act of making art. These two distinctly female roles in my own life are coming together in this body of work that uses ordinary household objects as materials to create a series of sculptures and installations.'
10 February 2013 - 12 May 2013
