This is a study of the way Senzeni Marasela, a South African artist, uses dress to subvert the invisibility of Black South African women, who have previously been marginalised and restricted to the context of the home and domestic work. This article studies several works across Marasela’s career, with a focus on the immersive performance titled Waiting (October 2013 to October 2019) and Theodorah Comes to Johannesburg (2005). The works are read in terms of their presentation on social media and in their art context. In particular, social media posts made during the six-year performance period of Waiting are studied to ascertain how the act of posting content online is used to further make visible Black South African women living through the effects of apartheid. The purpose of this study is to explore how Marasela narrates a lived experience of Black womanhood in ways that are distinctly layered and intersectional in their adoption of discourse and complex in their presentation to the audience.
Marasela also does not depict herself performing domestic tasks such as cooking and cleaning while performing the role of Theodorah. This is notable because it further confirms that, although the dress she wears is still associated with domestic work, the conceptualisation of Maraselas work is not linked by the artist to domestic workin fact, it may even operate in opposition to domestic work. This further refuses the expectation specific to Black women, and married rural Black women, associated with seshoeshoe. Marasela probably cooks at least occasionally. Even if she employed a domestic worker, there would be some chores she regularly completes herself. However, instead of flattening her lived experience to domestic work, she makes visible a better-rounded version of a woman who socialises, explores, and poses for pictures.
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Publicly Addressing the Visibility of Black Womanhood Khan (2014, 100101) suggests that Marasela refuses individualism; she considers Maraselas work as a project for a collective that includes, but is not limited to, Theodorah Maraselaher mother, a historical figure and symbol of the exploitation of the Black female body under colonialismand Sarah Baartman. Khan (2014, 100) goes on to argue that Maraselas work aims to reclaim the narrative of the troubled and troubling Black woman.
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Marasela intends to extract and replicate the waiting aspect of her mothers life to indicate its significance to the lives of others in her demographic (Khan 2014, 99). Later in Theodorah Comes to Johannesburg this becomes more apparent, when her mothers experience of travelling from the Eastern Cape to Johannesburg becomes combined with the experience of her cousin whose husband deserts her. Maraselas work stems from the private context of her home and family life, but should be more fully understood as a public and shared exposition as well (Richards 2004, 230). Her artistic research deliberately explores Black womanhood collectively. 88 Anguria
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Elvira Dyangani Ose (2008, 100) states: If we didnt know her name and werent acquainted with the artist we would imagine this to be an anonymous character, any woman from the countryside or the outskirts who has just set foot in the city. What Marasela does in her art is akin to Magubanes (2010) examination of the effect apartheid laws had on the formation of feminist ideology in South Africa. The length of Maraselas Waiting on its own is already indicative of the apartheid legacy on Black feminism. Theodorah is steadfast in her wait for Gebane, and while one level of analysis may consider her a victim, I would prefer to frame Theodorahs performance as an act of radical Black feminism. The various laws that Magubane (2010) looks at would have been the backdrop for Theodorahs life, as Marasela has created the character based on the apartheid context (Law-Viljoen 2008, 206). In other words, Theodorahs pursuit of Gebane and her desire to live alongside him as his wife is Black feminist ac
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