Berni Searle

"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 dont 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."

"Searle pays constant attention to the social issues and movements in South Africa, such as xenophobia, access to housing, land and political protests. Her work is not reducible to simple poignant condemning. Rather, through her visual language, ripe with symbolism and narrativity, she creates the entanglement of poetic and violent imagery which captures the contradictions and complexities of South Africa."

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

"We were denied the experience of knowing what Nelson Mandela looked like. We were denied the experience of each others lives." Still, "one developed ways around the system that were illicit but expressive . . . we all learned, as it were, to wiggle and squiggle."

"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 ones identity is not static, and constantly in a state of flux."