Minnette
Vári
SELF PORTRAIT SERIES
"Minnette Vári, another South African artist, […] bombarded
the art world with her provocative installations, videos,
and conceptual pieces
that frequently probed a traumatized and marginalized psyche. Her controversial
Self Portrait series (1995), a digitally-altered and conscious affectation of
the artist as a primordial black woman,
almost immediately fuelled the indignation of even the most cosmopolitan and
indulgent critics of contemporary African art.
"Here we may not find hate necessarily" wrote the Nigerian artist/art
historian/critic Olu Oguibe "but we do find racial
disregard and license alright". Apart from the anticipated knee-jerk charges
of objectification and cannibalism, Vári's
Self Portrait 1 and Self Portrait 2 intentionally elicited a perhaps more intriguing
but less analyzed critique of the very
real limitations of a postmodern and post-apartheid "self portrait"
in South Africa: a place weighted down with racial an
political baggage too ponderous and pervasive to ignore."
Extract from 'Black Art: A Cultural History' by Richard J. Powell
2002, Thames & Hudson, London
Johannesburg 1999
SELF PORTRAIT
l, 1995
Photographic print on Aluminium
120 x 204 cm
Edition of 3 & 1 EA
SELF PORTRAIT
l, 1995
Billboard
300 x 600 cm
Edition of 3 & 1 EA
SELF PORTRAIT
ll, 1995
Photographic print on Aluminium
140 x 215 cm
Edition of 3 & 1 EA
SELF
PORTRAIT lll, 1995
Photographic print on Aluminium
120 x 204 cm
Edition of 3 & 1 EA