inkjet on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, diasec

Artwork date: 2019
Edition: 1 from of an edition of 10 + 3AP
Exhibited: Strauss & Co, Johannesburg, 'Dream Invisible Connections: Mary Sibande & Dorothy Kay', 11 July to 12 August 2022.

Examples from the edition were exhibited in:
Frieze London, The Regent’s Park, Kavi Gupta Booth, 13 to 17 October 2021.
Kavi Gupta, Washington, 'Mary Sibande: Unhand Me, Demon!', 22 May to 31 July 2021.
Somerset House, London, 'Mary Sibande: I Came Apart at the Seams', 3 October 2019 to 5 January 2020.
FNB Art Joburg, Sandton Convention Centre, SMAC Booth, 13 to 15 September 2019.
Location: Cape Town

(1)

199 x 136 cm; framed size: 203 x 138 x 3.5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

SMAC Gallery, Cape Town.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

A powerful image, To Everything There is a Season, is part of Mary Sibande’s most recent series titled I Came Apart at the Seams (2019-), following her previous series Long Live the Dead Queen (2009-13) and The Purple Shall Govern (2013-17). This series chronicles the transformation of the artist’s protagonist, Sophie, depicting her third stage of evolution and significant change in character. In Sibande’s work, Sophie bears the weight of subjugation and marginalisation while defying it with her inner strength, forceful femininity, and self-respecting blackness. Each series narrates a different period in Sophie’s transfiguration: she appears as a noble 'maid' in eloquent Victorian dress, a ruling queen, a soldier, and a high priestess, with each change more defiant and fantastical than the last as she moves toward empowerment. Sophie's body and attire become a canvas for rewriting history, challenging stereotypes, and transcending the legacies of racial and gender oppression, thus redefining her position within historical and contemporary narratives.

In To Everything There is a Season, Sophie is depicted as a worshipper dressed in white and red, kneeling in penitence – or humility – within a Church of revolution. Here, the red-clad Sophie represents contemporary post-apartheid South Africa, still grappling with anger toward the policy’s aftermath and legacy.

Referencing the Purple Rain Protest of the late 1980s, the Purple Sophie depicted in the stained glass window (from The Purple Shall Govern series) represents revolutionary South Africa, fighting back against the system. In this scene, the Purple Sophie appears as a saint or perhaps even an archangel, to whom the Red Sophie submits, praying for strength against anger, guidance, and perhaps forgiveness.

The title of the work is drawn from the song Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season), a folk melody written in the late 1950s and popularised by American songwriter and political activist Pete Seeger. The lyrics are based on the verses in Ecclesiastes 3:8 in the Bible, which posits that there is a time and place for all things: birth and death, laughter and sorrow, healing and killing, war and peace.

It is perhaps in this biblical and spiritual realm that Sophie could now find redemption from history, as reflected in the song's lyrics: "a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up."

Marelize Van Zyl

COLLECTOR’S NOTE

• In 2019, the same year in which Mary Sibande produced this work, she presented a solo exhibition at Leroy Neiman Gallery in New York. She also exhibited in Open Borders at the 14th Curitiba International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Brazil; Construction of the Possible, at Havana Biennale in Cuba and Made Visible, Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity at the Boston Museum of Fine Art.
• Most recently, Sibande featured in A Gateway to Possible Worlds at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, France in 2023, and her solo exhibition The Red Ventriloquist, was shown at Musée d’art Contemporain de Lyon (MAC Lyon), France in 2022.
• In 2021, Sibande received the prestigious Helgaard Steyn Prize for her sculpture In the Midst of Chaos, There Is Opportunity (2017). Other awards include the Smithsonian National Museum of African Arts Award in 2017 and Virginia C. Gildersleeve Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York for 2018-2019.
• Sibande formed part of the South African Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 and in 2013 she was the recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts, Johannesburg.

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC.; Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCCA), Cape Town; Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne (MAC-VAL), Vitry-sur-Seine and the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town.