Installations
From the 8th of September to the 24th of November, Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana presented a comprehensive programme featuring installations, archives and performances by the participants of the edition.
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Isaziso 1996
- TypeInstallation
- ParticipantBuhlebezwe Siwani
- VenueThe See of Ègara
Isaziso 1996, 2024 © Buhlebezwe Siwani. Photo © Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana /Cecília Coca
The South African artist Buhlebezwe Siwani recalls the omnipresence of Sunlight soap in her childhood. Indispensable in low-income households in Siwani’s home country, she used the inexpensive, multi-purpose green soap to wash the house, dishes and herself, in what she recalls was “a humiliating routine of body washing” carried out in front of whoever was in the house at the time. For Siwani, the soap thus symbolises the ways in which the Black (female) body was considered ‘unclean’ and impure. The soap has come to feature prominently in Siwani’s practice, as she carves sculptures out of it. In Isaziso 1996, the artist sculpturally reproduces a photographic portrait of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, which was first published in the inaugural issue of Elle magazine’s South African edition. The artist modifies the portrait by expanding what it depicts, inserting herself and her child in the photograph, and conjuring her great-grandmother in the form of an apricot tree. Presented at the Church of St. Michael – a funerary church dating to the 6th century, on whose site a Visigothic baptistery was discovered – this installation speaks to maternal lineage, family legacies, death, birth and the circle of life.
2024
Green soap, cherry wood, wood, styrofoam, polyurethane, apricot tree
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon
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