Berni Searle Quotes

South African artist (born 1964)

Berni Searle (born 7 July 1964 in Cape Town, South Africa) is an artist who works with photography, video, and film to produce lens-based installations that stage narratives connected to history, identity, memory, and place. Often politically and socially engaged, her work also draws on universal emotions associated with vulnerability, loss and beauty. Searle lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa, and is currently an associate professor at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town.

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Alternative Names: Bernice Searle

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Without providing any definite answers, I think my work raises questions about attitudes towards race and gender. I think it operates on different levels and reflects different racial and political experiences - but I don't think my pieces are limited by that. I hope they transcend and go beyond that, and provide a space for illusion and fantasy. They reflect a desire to present myself in various ways to counter the image that has been imposed on me. Race is inevitable in South Africa.

I don’t have a ‘feminist artist statement’ as such. Being a woman is only one aspect of who I am.

The self is explored as an ongoing process of construction in time and place. The presence and absence of the body in the work points to the idea that one's identity is not static, and constantly in a state of flux.