CHOOSE ARTIST
Robert Breer, Paul Chan, Martha Colburn, Thomas Demand, Edison Manufacturing Company, Fleischer Studios, Brent Green, George Griffin, Ezra Johnson, Bill T. Jones and OpenEnded Group, William Kentridge, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Laleh Khorramian, Maria Lassnig, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Joshua Mosley, Oscar Muñoz, Jacco Olivier, Raymond Pettibon, Robert Pruitt, Christine Rebet, Mary Reid Kelley, Lotte Reiniger, Robin Rhode, Hiraki Sawa, Berni Searle, Cindy Sherman, Federico Solmi, Dziga Vertov, Kara Walker- Berni Searle
- About to Forget, 2005
- 35mm cinemascope film transferred to three-channel video projection; sound; 3 minutes
Courtesy of the artist and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town
ABOUT THIS WORK
In About to Forget, Berni Searle transforms family photographs into a unified image by tracing the silhouettes of the figures onto one sheet of red crepe paper. This action unites two generations of her kin, her grandmother and mother, who had been estranged for religious differences when her mother, a Muslim, converted to Catholicism for her marriage. As the paper is immersed in warm water, the ink bleeds, animating the images and providing a meditation on the transient nature of memory while calling into question the notion of connection through bloodlines.
ABOUT BERNI SEARLE
Berni Searle was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1964, where she lives and works. Searle earned an MFA from the University of Cape Town after receiving a BFA from the same institution. Exploring South Africa’s complex history, Searle creates photos, films, and multimedia installations in which her own body and identity figure prominently. Though her works are aesthetically alluring in their quiet simplicity, they are politically strong in their address to a nation still coping with its past. Searle’s work has appeared in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art; the Brooklyn Museum; the Kunsthalle Vienna; the Istanbul Modern; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC. Her work was included in the 49th and the 51st Venice Biennale in 2001 and 2005; and the Dakar Biennale in 2000, where she won the DAK’ART 2000 Minister of Culture Prize.