Mary Sibande: I Came Apart at the Seams

Bright exhibition at Somerset House of new work by South African artist Mary Sibande.

Sibande’s work addresses South Africa’s history and the legacy of that history today. She uses herself as a model for photographs and sculptures. The show featured work from three series which included blue figures of a maid, purple fantasy figures representing the struggle of apartheid and red ones representing current disaffection.

I’d seem her figures before in an exhibition on Africa at the British Museum and loved them and they were the highlight of this show. Her blue maid figures representing the past of South Africa wear mock Victorian clothes made by Sidande. This was shown with a purple figure which seems to be metamorphosing into an octopus in purple to mark a 1989 protest in which purple pain canons being fired on a crowd were turned by them onto the police so the whole crowd was the same colour.  In another room there was another figure merging from or being consumer by a root system.

Closes 5 January 2020