Selected Exhibitions | Selected Readings | Weblinks | Artist page | Introduction to Exhibit

Berni Searle explores her own and a broader South African identity in Profile, which presents eight photographic prints of the artist's face impressed with graphic symbols. These allude to the history of colonialism and apartheid and the contrasts of Black/White, European/Middle Eastern, Muslim/Catholic and European/African. They include a cross, a rakam (Muslim prayer), a British imperial crown, an apartheid-era shield, an African beadwork panel, a Dutch windmill and cloves that refer to the spice trade that led the Dutch to colonize the Cape and brought Searle's ancestors to work there in indentured servitude.

By "branding" her body, Searle recalls 19th-century anthropometric photographs of natives and the unforgettable markings of Holocaust survivors. Of course, Searle's graphic markings are temporary, captured only by the lens's ability to preserve a moment in time. The translucency of these images emphasizes the impermanence of stereotypes and the complex layers of identity.

Selected Exhibitions
1997 Life's Little Necessities. 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa
1999 Colour Me. Mark Coetzee Fine Arts Cabinet. Cape Town, South Africa
2000 A.r.e.a. 2000. Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland
Artworks for AIDS. Auction held in Boston, Durban, Brussels.
Dak'Art 2000. Dakar, Senegal
7th International Cairo Biennale
Insertion. Apex Gallery, New York
Gasworks Studios. London, England
2001 Still, Axis Gallery, New York
Colour Matters, Kunsthalle Stadgallerie, Osnabr¸ck, Germany
Authentic/Ex-centric: Africa in and out of Africa. 49th Venice Biennale, Venice
Encounters with the Contemporary, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution
2002 Documenta 11
2004 Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art.
New York. Catherdral of St. John the Divine/Museum for African Art.

Selected Readings
Coombes, Annie, "Skin Deep/Bodies of Evidence: The Work of Berni Searle" in Authentic/Ex-centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art. Salah Hassan and Olu Oguibe (eds), 2001.
Bedford, Emma, "What's It Mean? The Cairo Biennale" in Co@artnews (February 1999)
Murinik, Tracy, "Berni Searle"in NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art (Spring/Summer 2001).
Williamson, Sue, "Staking Claims: Confronting Capetown" in NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art(Fall/Winter 2000).

Weblinks
www.artthrob.co.za/00may/artbio.html
www.gasworks.org.uk
www.legacy-project.org/artists/display.html
www.axisgallery.com
www.galerie-seippel.de