Berni Searle
Cape Town/New York,
South Africa/USA
South African artist Berni Searle works with photography, video and film to produce lens-based installations that stage narratives connected to history, memory and place. Her work was included in the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale, the 1998 Cairo Biennale, and the 2001 and 2005 Venice Biennales. Searle received a UNESCO award in 1998, the Minister of Culture prize at the Dak’art 2000 Biennale, and was nominated for the FNB VITA Art Award 2000 and Daimler-Chrysler Award for South African Contemporary Art in 2000. In 2001, she was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, was the Standard Bank Young Artist in 2003 and shortlisted for the first Artes Mundi award in 2004.
Feminist Artist Statement
I don’t have a ‘feminist artist statement’ as such. Being a woman is only one aspect of who I am.
Snow White
Double projection video installation, opposite each other, in sync.
Duration 9 minutes.
Commissioned by the Forum for African Arts for the exhibition Authentic/ Ex-centric, 49th Venice Biennale, Italy in 2001.
Snow White
Double projection video installation, opposite each other, in sync.
Duration 9 minutes.
Commissioned by the Forum for African Arts for the exhibition Authentic/ Ex-centric, 49th Venice Biennale, Italy in 2001.
On Either Side
Archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper.
Edition of 3 + AP.
Free Fall
Edition of 3 +1AP.
Approach
Edition 5 +1AP
Night Fall (video still)
Three-channel video installation, U formation, in sync. Duration 5 min. 52 secs., color, sound. Edition of 5 + 1 AP
About to Forget (video stills)
Three channel video installation, alongside eachother, in sync. Duration 3 minutes. Edition 5 + 1 AP.
Untitled (From the ‘Colour Me’ series)
One of a set of 4 untitled photos from the “Colour Me” series. Edition 10 + 1 AP.
“Berni Searle’s ‘Colour Me’ series (1998−2000) focuses on the colonial history of the artist’s native Cape Town, South Africa, established in the seventeenth century as a refreshment station along the Dutch East India Company’s spice trade route to Indonesia. As a result, large populations of Indian indentured servants were sent to the Cape to work for Dutch settlers. They have formed an integral part of the city’s population and culture ever since. In ‘Girl’, Searle employs the language of ethnography and anthropology to address racism in South African politics, history, and visual culture. The artist portrays herself in a corpse-like manner, dissected into twelve photographs, thereby transforming her body into a fetishized object for display. The photographs are topped by glass jars with various local spices, such as paprika, turmeric, and brown cloves. ‘Girl’ speaks to the reality of hybridity created by indentured servitude and the cultural and racial mixing of natives, colonizers, and colonized (African, Dutch, and Indian). The ‘Colour Me’ series also functions as a direct reference to apartheid and the government’s creation of a third racial category for mixed ethnicities, called “coloured,” in which Searle was/is included. The reinscription of her own body back into this charged history functions conceptually to compound and disband the history of colonial power and relationships.”—Amy Brandt, “Global Feminisms”
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