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REPRESENTATIONS OF DOMESTIC WORKERS IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICAN ART PRACTICE A full thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of DOCTOR OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY In the FACULTY OF HUMANITIES At the UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG by IRENE ENSLÉ BRONNER Student No. 201338351 January 2016 Supervisor: Professor Brenda Schmahmann Co-supervisor: Dr Stephen Sparks Abstract In this study, I analyse selected examples of South African art practice that represent black female domestic workers, focusing on works of portraiture and performance produced in the post-apartheid years. I argue that this liminal figure is often fetishised or positioned as uncanny because the trope of the domestic worker or servant is a site for the interpellation of self and other and family and nation, serving both material and ideological ends. A domestic worker in her employer’s home and family circle, and the reproduction of labour that she facilitates and the child-care that she provides, stirs up layers of memories and emotions that speak to historical and structural traumas that constitute South African subjectivities. Post-apartheid culture continues to seek language to express the consequences of migration, urbanisation, racialised and class-based separations and inequalities, community fragmentation and new supportive networks, lost and new opportunities, petty power manipulations, and emotions such as love, anger, resentment, loneliness, anxiety and fear. The art-makers of multivariate backgrounds whom I have selected have sought to facilitate visual rapprochements across these lines of socialised difference, reflecting critically on issues arising from the processes and consequences of representation in their own practice. Informed by feminist analyses of representation, I draw on a socio-historical methodology as well as psychoanalytic work to examine various rhetorical, textual and pictorial elements. These interpretative tools allow me to coalesce a hermeneutics that explores not only the socio-historical context for institutionalised, paid domestic labour, indicating why it is such a potent issue in South Africa, but also why the figure of the ‘servant’ recurs as an archetype in cultural narratives. ii Declaration of Originality I declare that the work contained in this thesis is my own original writing. Sources referred to in the creation of this thesis have been appropriately acknowledged by explicit references. Other assistance received has been acknowledged. I have not knowingly copied or used the words or ideas of others without such acknowledgement. This thesis is being submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for Doctor of Literature and Philosophy (D.Litt et Phil) at the University of Johannesburg. This work has not previously been submitted to any other university or institution for examination. Part of this research has been published as Irene Bronner, 2015, ‘Slow Rhythm with Nomsa Dhlamini in Steven Cohen’s Cradle of Humankind’ in de arte (92), pp. 33 – 48. ……………………………………………….. Irene Enslé Bronner January 2016, Melville, Johannesburg. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………….…... vi List of Illustrations …………………………………………………...………… vii INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………...……. 1 Scope of, background and approach to the study …………………………..... 2 Subject of the study …………………………………………………………..… 5 Original contribution ………………………………………………………..… 14 Chapter outline ………………………………………………………………... 16 CHAPTER ONE: RE-MEMBERING ‘NANNIES’ AND CHILDREN IN PENNY SIOPIS’S TULA TULA (1994) …………….………….………...... 25 Introduction ………………………………………………………………….…. 25 The ‘Nanny’ in South Africa ………………………………………………...… 30 Tula Tula: Transforming photographs to examine memories ………………. 36 Tula Tula: Reversing colour in photocopies to represent psychic loss ….…... 44 Tula Tula: When painting over photocopies is an act of mourning ………..... 49 Tula Tula: The Frame as commemorative fetish and traumatic wound …..... 55 The Baby and the Bathwater: Representing motherhoods ………………….... 60 Maids: Developing non-mimetic representations of domestic workers ……... 67 Tula Tula: When colour generates subjective connection ………………….... 79 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………......... 83 CHAPTER TWO: DOMESTIC WORKERS MARKING LANDSCAPE IN JANE ALEXANDER’S PASTORAL SCENE (1995) …..………………… 85 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………. 85 Situating the African pastoral ………………………………………………… 89 Female servants as boundary markers in colonial space ……………………. 99 Labour in the pastoral landscape ………………………………………....….. 106 Pastoral Scene: The Bench that landmarks separation …..………………..... 115 Pastoral Scene: The Madonna, the Worker and the Widow ………………... 122 – The Pastoral Madonna ……………………………………………………… 122 – The Pastoral Worker ………………………………………………..………. 128 – The Pastoral Widow ……………………………………………………..….. 133 Pastoral Scene: The bitch as witness to dispossession ………………..……... 134 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………..……. 140 iv CHAPTER THREE: QUEERING ‘MAIDS’ AND ‘MADAMS’ IN ZANELE MUHOLI’S ‘MASSA’ AND MINA(H) (2008) .……………….…... 142 Introduction ………………………………………………………………...….. 142 Querying normativity with sexual expression …………………………...…... 149 Asserting presence in photographic portraits of domestic workers …...…… 159 Faces and Phases: Muholi’s LGBTI* archival project ………………...……. 168 ‘Massa’ and Mina(h): Queering ‘maid’ and ‘madam’ ………………...…….. 179 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………...……. 191 CHAPTER FOUR: TRAUMATIC RHYTHMS IN STEVEN COHEN’S CRADLE OF HUMANKIND (2012) ……………....….. 194 Introduction ………………………………………………………………....….. 194 Fetishising the trope of the domestic worker …………………………....…… 196 “Working with you, for you?”: Nomsa Dhlamini in Steven Cohen’s work … 198 Sarah Baartman as a contemporary symbol ………………………………..... 203 Cohen’s self-othering, when extended to others …………………………...…. 205 Baubo as an alternative symbol to Sarah Baartman …………………...…..... 211 The slow time of mourning and presence ………………………………...…... 219 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………...……. 225 CHAPTER FIVE: UNCANNY DOUBLES IN ITERATIONS OF MARY SIBANDE’S ‘SOPHIE’ (2007 – 2013) …...…. 229 Introduction …………………………………………………………………..... 229 Development of ‘Sophie’ …………………………………………………....…. 232 Deploying excess as bloated sartorial fantasy ……………………………....... 242 Development of the domestic-worker uniform …………………………....…. 253 Uniforms in the Women’s Manyano ………………………………….....……. 259 Re-working domestic-worker uniforms ……………………………...….….… 262 Circulating ‘blackness’ on the surface of the skin …………………….……... 269 Uncanny doubling in life casts and death masks …………………………....... 276 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………...….. 284 CONCLUSION ……………………...…………………………………......….... 286 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………...…...….. 295 ILLUSTRATIONS ……………………………………..……...…..Volume attached v Acknowledgements The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) from 2012 – 2014 towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed, and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF. I extend my appreciation to Prof. Natasha Erland, Dr. Stephen Sparks, the Department of Historical Studies and the Faculty of Humanities for providing a way for me to do a doctorate in Art History. I thank everyone who attends FADA research seminars for the input and encouragement they gave me. I am grateful to Dr. John Gillam and Ms. Liezel Strydom at Postgraduate Funding for the solicitude and advice they offered me as a student at Rhodes University. With love, gratitude and humility, I thank the people and the practices that have quietened, opened, nurtured, challenged and strengthened me during these years: The dance. Yoga. Freya, my cat, and Brinjil, my rabbit. My dear friends and mentors; here I acknowledge particularly Milton Milaras, efharistó, who also helped me format the Illustration volume. Elizabeth Bronner, my mother (who also spent hours formatting the Illustrations). And those who are not here but whose space I hold. Finally, I thank Prof. Brenda Schmahmann, for her perspicacity, integrity, tenacity, generosity and kindness. She has been my supervisor and the navigator of my vicissitudes. She believed in me until I eventually decided to try believing in myself. vi List of Illustrations Chapter One Figure 1.1: Penny Siopis. Tula Tula I. (1994). Photocopy, photograph, steel wool, found object and oil on board. 111 x 67 cm. Artist’s collection. (Reproduction provided by Penny Siopis). Figure 1.2: Ernest Cole. Untitled (Black ‘nanny’ and white child). (1967). Photograph. Dimensions unknown. The Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasseblad Foundation. (Reproduction taken from Cole, E. 1967. House of Bondage. London: