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"Issues of race are unavoidable, especially since the body was a primary site of identification in terms of racial classifications in the South African context and therefore cannot be overlooked.
What interests me more, however, are ideas of ambiguity and mutability in relation to the concept of identity, and the various subject positions we occupy, which are always fluid."
- Berni SEARLE
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Berni SEARLE
Interlaced, 2011Three-channel video projection
HD video, sound, colour, synchronised8 minutes 30 secsEdition of 5 + 2APsFull video here.£ 13,000.00
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Berni Searle, Interlaced, 2011. Video still.
Commissioned for a solo exhibition in Bruges, Brussels, Interlaced shows Berni SEARLE’s continuing engagement with the effects of colonisation, dispossession and displacement. Filmed in the ornate Gothic Chamber of Bruges’s town hall, the site, as a seat of power, presents a backdrop against which to consider the wealth accumulated in a country with a history marred by plundering and violence under King Leopold II in the Congo.
Two new large-scale prints that draw on the performance were produced in early 2021 for an exhibition at the Johannesburg Contemporary Art Foundation. The incorporation of the artist’s own body can be seen in Mantle I (2021), where Searle is covered in a golden cape, and in Mantle II (2021), where the shroud has dropped to her feet, revealing the artist in a black lace gown with gold-painted hands.
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"Searle alternately becomes and then transgresses personifications of the Virgin Mary, a Bruggeling (citizen of Bruges), a veiled Muslim woman, a mystic. Searle interrupts the ceremonial performance of the Gothic Chamber with her own rites, and a space of orchestrated histories and municipal governance becomes witness to Searle's civic protest."
- Julie McGee
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Berni Searle, Interlaced, 2011. Video still.
Interlaced is accompanied by four prints from Searle's Lament series, in which the artist subverts the iconography of Christian lamentation, instead lamenting the atrocities committed against the Congolese under King Leopold II, her gilded hands a direct reference to the severing of hands and feet as punishment under his reign.
Searle is once again clothed in lace, a reference to both the Christian tradition of veiling, but also to the act of covering oneself in the Islamic tradition of the burka. Her own cultural heritage is reflected in the religious references, Searle’s paternal lineage being European, with Searle raised a Catholic against the backdrop of her maternal grandmother’s Muslim ancestry.
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Berni Searle, SEEKING REFUGE, 2008. Video still.
The transformation of Searle’s body is also evident in an earlier work titled Seeking Refuge (2008), in which the artist’s hands and feet are covered in a deep crimson red. Here she specifically examines the microcosm of Lanzarote, a landscape scarred by volcanic rock and ash, which proves inhospitable but for the hardiest of species. Dying her body using the crimson acid ink of an indigenous insect, the cochinilla, the series shows Searle both independent, striding in the landscape as with Flight (2008) and hiding or laying herself to rest, as with Enfold (2008). Becoming part of the land, she makes visible the feelings of translocation and lost identity that migrants experience as well as the tenacity to survive in an otherwise inhospitable landscape.
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Berni SEARLE
SEEKING REFUGE, 2008Single channel video projection
Colour, sound5 minutes 56 secsEdition of 5 + 2 APsFull video here.£ 9,000.00
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"Rather than dealing with the migration of people from neighboring African countries, which is often accompanied by traumatic experiences and drastic consequences, I chose to focus on the tenacity of people to survive in places which are often threatening and harsh, highlighting the instinct for survival and the will/desire to make these new places of encounters ‘home’."
- Berni Searle -
Berni Searle, In wake of (from the 'Into the dark' series), 2014
In the triptych To hear, to see, to speak (2014), Searle sprinkled coal dust over her body. The work was created after the 2012 Marikana massacre in which striking mineworkers were shot at close range by the South African police. In these closely cropped images, Searle’s body is positioned as if laid out in death. Her hands hold gold Kruger Rand coins, a symbol of the wealth created by the mine owners presented in stark contrast to the migrant workers who suffer under systems of racial, gender, class and economic segregation. The body here is presented as a unit of labour and memorialises women affected by the mining industry.
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Berni SEARLE
To hear, to see, to speak (From the 'Into the dark' series), 2014Archival digital printsFrom left to rightL 45 x 45 cm, 45 x 55 cm, 45 x 45 cmEdition of 5 + 2 AP£ 9,000.00
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Berni SEARLE
In wake of (from the 'Into the dark' series), 2014Archival digital print on Hanemuhle PhotoRag paper200 x 100 cmEdition of 3 + 2 APs£ 14,000.00
Berni Searle: Mantle
Past viewing_room
