Art highlighting the experience of racism and segregation.

 Berni Searle – Traces

Berni Searle lived through a significant portion of the Apartheid rule in South Africa. Apartheid – as one of history’s most ruthless events of racism and discrimination between blacks and whites – it stained the first-hand impact of racial segregation into the minds and hearts of many South Africans, including Berni Searle. This article discusses one of Berni Searle’s famous artworks, Traces, and its symbolic importance and effectiveness in illustrating the segregation and racism of Apartheid.

When the Apartheid rule ended, the people of South Africa were expected to somewhat just continue with their lives; forget the pain, forget the suffering… just move on. A simple request from the men and women who reaped all the benefit. But anyone who knows the extent of Apartheid will know that to even suggest simply “moving on” is an idea too ignorant for the partisans of Apartheid.

The Artwork: Traces, 1999.

For Berni Searle, the question was simple: How can you expect people to just continue with their lives (as if nothing happened) after making them go through such discrimination and racism. This was the principle that drove Berni Searle’s emotions of her experience to create the artwork Traces in 1999.

Traces was meant to embody the concept of home and dislocation - two very prominent concepts that arose during Apartheid due to forced segregation. Families were torn apart, people were forcefully removed from their homes, and public places had restricted access on anyone who was not of the “pure race”. Berni Searle herself was not of a “pure race” and during the apartheid rule, she became disconnected from her identity. Being mixed race, Berni Searle found it difficult to place herself within the segregationally categorized groups set up by the Apartheid government (whom of which used additionally strict criteria to decide the category you belonged in).

Traces shows the “presence” and “absence” of bodies, spices and a common domestic item, the measuring scale. The use of spices in her art acts as a linkage back to colonial trade route economies, where the spice trade would come around Africa and proceed on toward India. The spices also nod to the times of slavery. As colonies made their way along the spice trade to different continents and countries, in addition to their spices, they would also bring back people as slaves. Each photograph in Traces shows the use of different coloured spices, this is a direct link to Apartheid where everyone would be classified according to colour. There are two rows of three photographed images printed on 3-metre-tall tracing paper.

The first row of photographed images depicts the “absence” of Berni Searle’s body lying on the ground. The photograph shows a silhouette of her body, created from where the spices fell around her when she was lying on the floor, depicting her body’s “absence”. The “absence” of the body speaks to the time during Apartheid where black people were given no identity, they were only recognised and classified by colour and they weren’t recognized in any way for who they were as individuals. At the bottom of these photographs is a measuring scale that has the left-over spices from what would have been lying on her body if it were present. On the second row of photographs, we can clearly see Berni Searle lying naked on the floor, covered in spices. The spices continue up her whole body to cover her mouth, symbolising the suffocation felt during Apartheid. This set of photographs depict the body’s “presence”.

Below her, we see an empty measuring scale. Berni Searle uses the weighing of the spices to quantify the value of an individual, once again making a link to slavery, where slaves were sold according to the value that they would bring to the buyer. Where the body is “absent” there is more spice being weighed in the scale, where the body is “present” there are no spices being weighed, however, no matter how much spices are in the scales, the measuring dial does not move, it stays in a central place representing the fact that Berni Searle, nor anyone else, could change the current measuring system (racial profiling) of individuals during apartheid.

Berni Searle’s use of photography is very important, traditionally, photographs are used as a means for documentation. In her work, Berni Searle highlights the permanence of documentation, archiving and recording of historical stereotypes. This conceptualization acts to directly contradict the regime of Apartheid where no one was given the right to be documented and seen as an individual.

By printing the photographs on tracing paper, because of their translucent characteristic, it helps visualize the concept of “absence” and “presence”. The set of photographs depicting “presence” is connected to the set of photographs depicting “absence”, joined at the base by a carpet of spices. The joining of the two rows acts as somewhat of a longing to be part of both. On the one side Berni Searle wishes that she could be “present” in the sense that she wishes to be identified and acknowledged as a person, but on the other hand, Berni Searle wishes that she could be “absent” in the sense that she wishes she never had the misfortune of being part of the racial profiling of Apartheid or the suffocating experience that came along
with it.

Berni Searle created Traces to highlight the personal and general suffering that the racism and segregation of Apartheid created. Although the artwork was created with this objective in mind, there are many concepts that are still very prevalent today and in our own lives that can be extracted from Traces.

For one, Traces can be symbolic of the helplessness we often feel when we are in a situation that we just want to be absent from, these situations can be extremely personal or specific, but they can also be bigger situations in life that leave us feeling helpless. Or perhaps you have found yourself in a situation where you felt silenced and suffocated at the expense of your self-worth, leaving you with this shell of a body of which your spirit and soul seems to be absent.

For another, Traces highlights our society’s eagerness to forgive and forget. 

The artist is like an abuser of everything, picture, history, and other people.

- Kara Walker

We are all aware of the relevance people and groups who have the mindset of choosing to disregard and discriminate against individuals and groups. Not only does this refer to the bigger problems of racial and religious discrimination, but it can be extended all the way down to our individual selves and circles, whereby we choose (consciously or unconsciously) to not acknowledge people with different thought patterns and opinions to our own, people who choose to dress differently or even those who conduct themselves in ways that do not align with our own.

Upon a deeper look, Berni Searle’s Traces, 1999, highlights more than just history, the artwork is symbolic of issues still very pertinent in our world today.

Can you extract any other aspects from Traces that resonate with your personal experiences or those of the society you live in?

SYMBOLISM SUMMARY:

Spices – links to colonial trade route & slavery.

Different coloured spices – Apartheid’s classification according to colour.

Photography – documentation; highlights Apartheid’s eagerness to deny documentation and identification to individuals.

Measuring scale – Apartheid’s methods of quantifying the value of individuals (buying slaves).

The measuring dial not moving – No one could change the current measuring system (racial profiling) of individuals during Apartheid.

Tracing paper rows of photographs – Symbolic of absence and presence.

Absence - Apartheid denied identity to people of colour, wishing to be excluded from the suffering of segregation and suffering.

Presence – Wishing to be identified and acknowledged as a person.

Joining of photographs by carpets of spice - a longing to be part of both the “absence” and the “presence”.