Mapping a fractured terrain

Senzeni Marasela explores themes of loss, memory and black South African womanhood

- Thembeka Heidi Sincuba

The Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) Gallery at the University of Johannesburg inaugurated an exhibition that featured Senzeni Marasela's Waiting and Remembering from 7 to 22 June.

The exhibition expanded Marasela's commitment to art as public memory work. As a Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD) research associate and Thami Mnyele Foundation fellow, Marasela's practice resonates far beyond local geographies — a transnational dialogue that bridges past, present and speculative futures.

Senzeni Marasela, born in 1977 in Thokoza, Gauteng, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans performance, photography, textiles, video and installation. A graduate of the Wits School of Arts (1998), she explores themes of black South African womanhood, memory and displacement through archival materials and material culture.

Marasela has exhibited widely, both locally and internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) and the Johannesburg Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale.

On 11 June, the artist, accompanied by her curator, the artist and researcher Refilwe Nkomo, led a walkabout at FADA, at which Marasela responded to audience questions with the same deliberate subtlety that animates her practice.

Nkomo began by introducing the audience to how the exhibition is anchored in Maru Musi, a framework of black feminist scholarship. This anti-museum project, developed by Nkomo, resists the traditional archive and reimagines the exhibition as a space for belonging, justice, homing and refusal.