SENZENI MARASELA

Awarded the prestigious k21 Global Art Award in 2022, Senzeni Marasela’s work primarily in embroidery and linen, deals with history, memory, and personal narrative, and places emphasis on historical gaps and overlooked figures and perspectives.

Her latest body of work comes after her six-year performance titled Waiting for Gebane. “Now using topographical maps, I make attempts to retrace his footsteps, where he was last seen, in Johannesburg. Gebane is Theodora’s (my alter-ego, named after my mother) fictional husband who abandons her in a village in the Eastern Cape and travels to Joburg. His whereabouts are unknown to her. She travels to Joburg daily, searching for her husband who disappeared into the bright lights of Johannesburg.”

Performed between 2013 and 2019, this tracing of footsteps titled Intsomi zakwaXhosa/fables and fairy tales of Xhosa people, featured as part of the Johannesburg Pavilion at 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and documentation for that performance later formed part of the survey exhibition, Waiting for Gebane at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town from 2020 to 2021. Marasela who lives and works in Johannesburg, has her work firmly rooted in that city firstly, and then secondly, on the continent.

“Johannesburg is a transitory city and the apex of the African dream. Many men like Gebane disappeared in Johannesburg. So, Theodora is embarking on a search and marking where he was last seen: around mine dumps, the city centre, outskirts of the city, and in the townships. In the South African context, the topographical map is an indication of occupation and omission. There are many parts of Johannesburg that were omitted from the topographical maps. This political act denied the existence of many people that the government couldn't label and fit into a particular category. For Theodora, the search for Gebane is both real and imaginary.”

Since graduating in 1998 from the University of the Witwatersrand with a degree in Fine Art, Marasela has worked as an artist, curator, educator and mentor both locally and abroad. She spotlights the erasure of the existence and histories of particular groups of people in South Africa, and the constraints faced alongside and as a result of these by women as amongst some of the most discounted in society, which are mapped out in topographies of community and resistance – collective and individual. 

Centering her practice on race, identity and gender inequalities, her work finds expression through textile and drawing and features in prominent local and international collections, including the Newark Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and MoMA, New York, as well as some private collections such as the Leridon collection in Paris, the Harry David collection in Athens, and the Sindika Dokolo collection in Angola.