Senzeni Marasela (South Africa 1977-)
Waiting for Gebane "Last Known Location" I

pastel and charcoal on paper

Artwork date: 2023-24
Signature details: signed, dated and inscribed with the title bottom right

(1)

200 x 152 cm unframed

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Senzeni Marasela’s work offers a profound exploration of identity, history, and gender through a deeply personal and political lens. As a multidisciplinary artist, Marasela engages with themes of displacement, memory, and the erasure of Black women's narratives in South Africa’s socio-political history. Her work is a compelling dialogue with the past, reinterpreted through the lens of the present.

Marasela forms part of a generation of post-apartheid South African female artists who reclaim the visibility of people of colour “through performative fictive masquerading”.[1] One of her most significant artistic projects is, Waiting for Gebane, where the artist embarked on a six-year-long performance as Theodora, a fictional character named after and inspired by her mother’s lived experiences in South Africa. Theodora is a rural woman waiting for her husband, Gebane, who has left to find work in the city – a reflection of South Africa’s history of labour migration.

The Last Known Location works follow after Marasela’s six-year performance. Theodora embarks on a further search as she attempts to retrace Gebane’s footsteps to where he was last seen in Johannesburg: around mine dumps, the city centre, outskirts of the city, and in the townships. Many men like Gebane disappeared in Johannesburg. Through this performance and her body of work, Marasela lives as Theodora, embodying the endurance, longing, and resilience of countless women impacted by apartheid’s displacement and migrant labour system. This ongoing project blurs the line between art and life, immersing viewers in the psychological and emotional toll of separation and longing.

Through her evocative storytelling and material choices, Marasela challenges dominant narratives, reclaiming space for Black South African women’s histories within contemporary art discourse.

Alexia Ferreira

^{[1] Bode Gallery. (2025). Online. Available: https://bode.gallery/artists/186-senzeni-marasela/overview/}

COLLECTOR'S NOTE

• Waiting for Gebane "Last Known Location" I & II were created during the Still Art Residency, run by the artist Ayana V. Jackson, at the Ellis House art building in Johannesburg in 2023.

• Local and international art fairs include Art Rotterdam, Investec Cape Town Art fair, Art Brussels (2024) and Untitled Miami (2023).

• In 2023 Marasela became the first recipient of the exciting new K21 Global Art Prize in Dusseldorf, Germany.

• A retrospective of Marasela’s work, Waiting for Gebane, marked the artist’s first museum exhibition and ran at the prestigious Zeitz MOCCA in Cape Town from 18 December 2020 to 2 May 2021.

• Notable local and international solo exhibitions include I write (stitch) what I like, Bode, Berlin (2024); New traditions: Louise McCagg & Senzeni Marasela, A.I.R. Gallery, New York, USA (2011); Oh my God you look like shit. Who let you out of the house looking like that?, Sternersen Museum, Oslo, Norway (2009); JONGA: Look at Me – Museum of Women, Dolls and Memories, Deveron Projects, Huntly, UK (2009)

• Notable local and international group exhibitions include Empowerment, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Denmark (2022); The Power of My Hands, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France (2021); Witness: Afro Perspectives from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio 23, Miami, USA (2020); Sous le fil, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France (2020); Alpha Crucis, Contemporary African Art, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway (2020); Paris Photo, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2019); Yesterday is Today’s Memory, Espace Commines, Paris, France (2019); I am… Contemporary Women Artists of Africa, The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, USA (2019).

• The artist was included in the South African Pavilion at the 56^th Venice Biennale in 2015.

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, the Newark Museum collection, Smithsonian Institution, USA; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Leridon Collection, Paris, Harry David collection, Athens and the Sindika Dokolo collection, Angola.