Senzeni Marasela

JONGA – Look at Me! A Museum of Women, Dolls and Memories. Devon Arts residency, Devon, Scotland

Nomad Bodies. Royal Academy of Fine Art, Antwerp, Belgium – Fried Contemporary, Pretoria, South Africa

Translations into Jewellery. Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa – Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

Dystopia. Unisa Art Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa – Museum Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa – Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Mangaung, Bloemfontein, South Africa – Jan Colle Galerij, Ghent, Belgium.

Black Womanwood: Icons, Images and Ideologies of the African Body. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA- Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, USA – San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, USA

In 2011 Marasela decided to work as a full-time artist and was part of the Johannesburg Pavilion at 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.

Marasela's work is regularly shown since the Martienssen Prize Exhibition in 1997. She was taken up by the Goodman Gallery after being part of the group exhibition Not Quite a Christmas Exhibition. She had a first solo exhibition at the Iziko South African National Gallery's Fresh exhibition series in 2000 which was part of a residency programme. In 2003, she started a long-term performance entitled Theodorah comes to Johannesburg in which is based on stories her mother told about her 11-hour travel from Mvenyane to Johannesburg.(ref)

Senzeni Marasela went to St Dominic's School for Girls in Boksburg where she matriculated in 1994. Her mother's collection of doilies and Victorian lace works which were handed down in her family over generations influenced her artistic practice. During a one-day trip in 1992 to the University of the Witwatersrand she decided to enroll there. She developed her multimedia and performative practice at the Wits School of Arts where she graduated in 1998.

Senzeni Marasela (11 February 1977) is a South African visual artist born in Thokoza who works across different media, combining performance, photography, video, prints, textiles and embroidery in mixed-medium installations. She obtained a BA in Fine Arts at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 1998. Her work is exhibited in South Africa, Europe and the United States, and part of local and international collections, including Museum of Modern Art or the Newark Museum and is referenced in numerous academic papers, theses journal and book publications.

Impressions from South Africa: Printed Art/1965 to Now. The Paul J. Sachs Prints and Illustrated Books Galleries, MoMA, New York, USA

DARKROOM: South African Photography and New Media 1950 – Present. Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, USA – Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, USA

Marasela's work explores the experiences of black South African women across a range of media, including photography, video, prints, and mixed-medium installations involving textiles and embroidery. In her work, she translates memories of struggle and urbanization through the use of material culture and narratives, such as the use of the colour red which refers to cultural memories around the time of the "Red Dust" which refers to a period of drought in the early 1930s in South Africa. Her performances interweave these elements and multi-media works, making visible the dimension of the everyday through objects and clothes. She is known for her six-year performance work Ijermani Lam which "materialises the condition of waiting" by wearing the same red dress every day from the 1st of October 2013 to the 1st of October 2019. The original dresses were part of the group the exhibition "Made Visible. Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity" at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (February–May 2019). Her work taps into cultural memories using printing archival materials such as newspapers and photographs on colonial textiles. It tells stories of black women in South Africa, such as Sarah Baartman or her mother Theodorah Mpofukazi Marasela through series such as Covering Sarah Baartman (2011), Sarah, Senzeni and Theodorah come to Joburg (2011), Theodorah, (2005), Waiting for Gebane (2017), Izithombe Zendawo Esizithandayo (2017) and builds an "intimate archive", giving voice to experiences of Black women.