10/18-Artist-Berni Searle

Berni Seale
interview
work



Categorized as "Coloured" under apartheid, Searle is a South African of mixed racial background. As an artist, she was originally trained as a sculptor. Now she uses large-scale photography, found objects, performance and installation together. "Using her own body as subject and point of departure, Searle experiments with the surface of her skin, allowing it to be clad in layers of coloured and aromatic spices, leaving her bodily imprint on drifts of spices on the floor, or staining certain areas of her body with various substances, suggesting trauma, or damage" (Williamson-ARTbio). The spices refer back to the spice trade, bringing in white colonists into the area and resulting in mixed children of local inhabitants and slaves. They were called "Coloured". Searle's work confronts head-on this history and the obsession with racial classification that ensued.


In "A New look on Feminism", Barbara Pollack writes, "Searle, who continues to live and work in Cape Town, is acutely aware that audiences in Europe and the United States may find her image exotic. 'Using my body is a tricky thing to do because it can reinforce stereotypes,' she says, explaining that to ward off simple voyeurism she intentionally inserts an element of confrontation into her self-portraits". I think that is an interesting comment about stereotyping. I feel as if her images do have an air of exoticism to them, but I don't think it is a bad thing. Her images are very striking firstmost, then you start to peel apart the concept. I think even the untrained eye can see that there is a statement behind the aesthetic.

"... [She] finds her identity as a black woman inescapable. 'I use my own body, so it is inextricably tied to issues of gender, but it is also connected to race and class,' says Searle, who acknowledges the influence on her work of American artists such as Lorna Simpson and Pat Ward Williams."

I absolutely love her work. She has some ideas similar to the ones swimming in my head. She has amazing imagery on her website but you can't direct link so I just have what I could get on google. Her images are coded strange. I don't think she is much of a photographer, but more a performance artist. Her statement on being "coloured" is so interesting. I wasn't aware that this happened over there. Her Colour Me series really draws me in.




I also enjoy her other work. She is definitely an artist I will keep bookmarked and refer back to often. I was very thankful to find someone with similar background working as a woman in the artworld. :)

These two polaroid transfers are from her Discoloured series and are titled Stain. "By staining different parts of her body with Egyptian henna, Berni Searle highlights notions of ‘black-ness’. She toys with the relationship between light and dark, where 'worth has traditionally been measured by the lightness of one’s skin'. It’s a reversal of the constructed desirability of ‘whiteness’..." (Bester). She plays with the definition of stain and includes pieces of dictionary pages with the installation. A stain is hard to remove/impossible. Skin color stays with you.

http://www.barrybester.com/bernisearle.htm