Berni Searle, South Africa
Lifeline, 1999
Digital prints, archival pigment ink on arches watercolour paper
24 photographs, 42x50 cm each
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Courtesy of the artist and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town
The palm of a black man appears in Bernie Searle’s work in enlarged close-up, split into 24 equal sections. This is the personal topography of every man which differentiates him from his fellow man, and connects him to one large human family. Searle uses the body as a starting point for her work, and through the language of ethnographic codes she challenges the political, historical and visual stereotypes of South Africa. The enlargement of the palm imprinted with ink sabotages the identification procedure linked to this procedure. It is by deliberate underlining of the identifying details that Searle prevents the activity of identification and classification.
Color Me, 1998
Hand printed color photographs
3 photographs, 42x50cm each
Courtesy of the artist and Durban Art Gallery, Durban
Bernie Searle uses her body as the starting point for her pieces. She conducts experiments on the territory of her skin, covers it in layers of colourful and fragrant spices, and dyes certain parts of her body to indicate harm or trauma. She uses the language of ethnography and cataloguing to challenge the political, historical and visual culture stereotypes of South Africa.
The spices in Searle’s work hint at the spice trade which Seventeenth Century white colonialists brought to the Cape of Good Hope, in South Africa. The encounter of these traders with the local population, and with the slaves brought from other parts of Africa, bred children of mixed races, “coloured”. Searle’s work grapples with this part of history and the obsession to catalogue race born out of it.
