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MA (History of Arts), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus This dissertation explores the South African artist Mary Sibande’s character Sophie and her transformation throughout the series Long Live the Dead Queen (2009), The Purple Shall Govern (2013, 2014) and I Came Apart at the Seams (2019-ongoing). In the three series in question, Sophie alters between what appears to be a stereotypical representation of a South African domestic worker, a Victorian woman resembling a madam, and a spiritual, divine figure. In this dissertation I investigate how Sophie transforms and declares her agency. More specifically, I probe how Sibande uses hysteria as a strategy to visualise this agency. Although previous work by Farber (2017) and Scheffer et al. (2017) has explored the link between Sibande’s work and hysteria, this dissertation contributes to the existing research by including Sibande’s most recent series I Came Apart at the Seams (2019-ongoing). This project also contributes to the literature by setting up a contextual framework for understanding Sibande’s character by focusing on the nature of her disempowerment. This is done by examining domestic work in South Africa. This project further aims to explore the development of Sophie’s agency in Sibande’s oeuvre, by scrutinizing her transformation that plays out through visual strategies of hysteria. In the past, hysteria was generally thought of as a pathological or psychological condition. However, in this dissertation, I take the feminist interpretation of hysteria as point of departure. From a feminist perspective, hysteria is regarded as a strategy or response against oppression that is caused by hierarchical social orders. Silenced by these structures, and in need of an alternative to linguistic means of expression, the hysteric reacts through fantasy and mimicry. In accordance with Farber (2017) and Scheffer et al. (2017), hysteria is realised and enacted by speaking through the body. In this sense, Sophie embodies and oscillates between three different alter egos: the domestic worker, the madam and what appears to be a spiritual figure. Through Sophie, Sibande engages with the stereotypical representations of domestic workers. She depicts Sophie as continually engaged in fantasy while she articulates the entrapped and oppressive state of domestic work. Sophie transforms as she escapes and heals from this entrapment by means of talking through the body. I argue that Sophie’s transformation from a domestic worker to a divine figure plays out by means of hysteria as a means to portray the progression of Sophie’s agency. Through an analysis of hysteria and the persona of Sophie, I investigate how Sibande employs hysteria as a transformative strategy. This project progresses as follows: In Chapter Two, I present a genealogy of hysteria and the development of the contemporary feminist interpretation of hysteria as a strategy against oppression. I demonstrate in Chapter Three that Sophie can be contextualised within the oppressive structures of black domestic work in South Africa. Then, in Chapter Four, I show with reference to Farber (2017) and Scheffer et al. (2017) how representations of Sophie coincide with hysteria. I specifically focus on Long Live the Dead Queen (2009-2011), in which Sophie gains agency by escaping domestic servitude by means of fantasy and mimicry. I also consider how Sibande uses these strategies of hysteria to give birth to an empowered identity that possesses agency in The Purple Shall Govern (2013, 2014) and transcends these strategies in I Came Apart at the Seams (2019-ongoing). By mimicking spiritual and mystical figures, Sophie confronts her past. Finally, I demonstrate Sophie’s hysterical metamorphosis throughout the three series, by arguing that she is no longer silenced but has reclaimed her voice and her agency. Masters |
