Senzeni Marasela
JONGA: Look at Me
Museum of Women, Dolls and Memories
"How do you do that? Make someone love you?"
- Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison's 1970 Novel, The Bluest Eye
Senzeni Marasela moved to Huntly from Johannesburg, South Africa with her daughter, Thato, during her residency in January 2009.
Through an increasing fascination with glossy magazines and the silver screen, the globalized world is subscribing to a single image of female identity, ignoring personal and cultural histories. Emaciated, busty and pale-skinned, this image is a naturally unattainable product, typified by the popular children's doll, Barbie. Moreover, this 'look' is also based upon the development of a cultural identity that ignores the individual backgrounds of most women. So, what is it that affords Barbie the affection and admiration she receives? What is it that provokes an opposing reaction? And what is Barbie's role in the globalized community of women, as an icon, a look, a childhood memory and a woman?
Senzeni Marasela cites her own experience as a woman, and relationships with other women as a stimulus for her artwork. In particular, her mother is a key figure to understanding Senzeni's views on female identity, as her diagnosis with schizophrenia and consequent absence from much of Senzeni's childhood is exemplary of a woman fragmented by contradictory expectations and multiple roles. Also, Senzeni has developed a practice of working with dolls, wherein a destructive or nurturing relationship is explored in understanding the complex role of a mother, as well as Senzeni's own personal identity as a black woman from South Africa, a place familiar with policies of segregation.
Senzeni's residency in Huntly took place during the Barbie doll's 50th anniversary. In a place where many people have grown up with and still own these dolls, Senzeni called for a Barbie amnesty in order to examine the cultural history of Barbie and the doll's relationship with the women of Huntly. This doll represented something completely different from other children's dolls in that Barbie was not a character to nurture, but one to aspire to - a fully formed image of perfection called beauty, pure ornamentation.
The Empty Shop on Bogie Street became a Museum of Women, Dolls and Memories. The museum exhibited the plastic limbs and fixed expressions of the dolls alongside the real women, and their voices, of Huntly in an oppressively pink room, the walls of which had been scrawled upon by Senzeni with penetrating statements and questions, such as the above quotation. This environment asked audience and participants to consider their feelings towards the proposed relationship between fulfillment and self-presentation, as well as their own roles and responsibilities as individuals and how they have developed, having grown up with this image of beauty in mind. Throughout the installation, Senzeni chalked her phrases wearing a shapeless sackcloth, renouncing presentation and fashion-identity, although at the same time she remained highly visible in contrast to the surrounding white-skinned women and 'real life Barbie' Sarah Burge, with whom she posed with for various photographs. It is this grey area that Senzeni seeks to explore, the interstices between the fragments that contextualize women's lives.
Centering around a Barbie/Doll amnesty by the local community, the exhibition installation Jonga looked at the role of the doll and how doll-play shapes future perceptions of the bodies that we live in. Like Pecola in Toni Morrison’s book Bluest Eye, Senzeni offered us a new outlook on echoes of the mind. She questions whether a constantly changing unattainable endeavour can truly be held as a standard of what is beautiful and lovable. When we are brought up to idolise the unrealistic, how do we create an identity that is not based on fairytales?
Senzeni Mthwakazi Marasela stayed with us for 3 months during January to April 09 with her 5 year old daughter Thato. Senzeni is from Johannesburg, South Africa and graduated from the University of Witwatersrand. She was the South African representative of the Beijing Biennale and has had numerous international exhibitions; among them Democracy’s Images in Umea/Sweden and Black Womanhood at Hood Museum of Art/New Hampshire. Current shows are: Beauty and Pleasure at the Stenersen Museum in Oslo; Developing Democracy at KyleKauffman Gallery in New York, Dystopia at UNISA gallery in Pretoria. Help me I want to look International opens later this year at Gallery Art on Paper in Johannesburg. She is recipient of the Thami Mnyele Scholarship 2002/Amsterdam, Upstream Award 2002/Amsterdam and Ampersand Fellowship 2008/New York.
Practika 21
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