Nosing through the bookshelves at a Johannesburg-based art specialist’s office some months ago, my eye was caught by a catalogue of work by sculptor, textile and installation artist Mary Sibande. It showed a fibreglass likeness of the artist posing in her own photographs, decked out in her own creations. I was so struck by the bold colours and defiant expressions that I spent the rest of the day researching her story. And a remarkable one it is.
Born under apartheid, 42-year-old Sibande belongs to the first generation of Black South Africans to have the legal right to access university education on an equal footing as their white peers. Today, Sibande is in great demand with residencies and exhibitions across the world. She has also won numerous prestigious accolades, including the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Arts Award and, most recently, the French government’s Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in November 2024. Sibande is best known for her work reimagining the domestic servants’ uniforms that her mother and foremothers were forced to wear, and it is through this that she explores questions of identity, class and history.
