An Intersectional Reading of Senzeni Marasela’s Work: Making Visible the Marginalised Lived Experiences of Black South African Women in States of Perpetual Waiting

Abstract

This is a study of the way Senzeni Marasela, a South African artist, uses dress to subvert the invisibility of Black South African women, who have previously been marginalised and restricted to the context of the home and domestic work. This article studies several works across Marasela’s career, with a focus on the immersive performance titled Waiting (October 2013 to October 2019) and Theodorah Comes to Johannesburg (2005). The works are read in terms of their presentation on social media and in their art context. In particular, social media posts made during the six-year performance period of Waiting are studied to ascertain how the act of posting content online is used to further make visible Black South African women living through the effects of apartheid. The purpose of this study is to explore how Marasela narrates a lived experience of Black womanhood in ways that are distinctly layered and intersectional in their adoption of discourse and complex in their presentation to the audience.