try and represent, or signal, another kind of subjectivity for black women in South Africa, especially as a white woman. Related to this issue is the fact that many of the representations of black women in your work are representations of subjection. Do you think there could be a charge levelled at you in the sense that the images and the sign of black women in your work is constantly one of subjection, and that the voices and experiences of resistance and agency for example, are not actually present except in signalling the ambivalent relationship between the white child and the nanny? I ask because I’ve been very aware having just spent a few months in South Africa of the incredible ways in which any women who were committed to challenging the regime and involved in the struggle, but in particular black women, have been almost erased from representations of the history of the Liberation. You rarely see acknowledgement of the repercussions for women, of the ‘Bantu’ system or apartheid’s policy of ‘separate development’ which forced the women to carry on an independent life with very few resources, separated from their husbands, where they continued the struggle on the domestic front. I find it disturbing that there’s so little acknowledgement in the official representations of the struggle here of the activity of women. Even the famous domestic workers’ march in Pretoria in the 1950s is never chosen as one of the constantly repeated iconic images of the struggle. On the domestic front and in the homelands during apartheid, women were absolutely central. You could even say that black women made the whole thing possible. There seems to be a kind of amnesia about women’s struggles and women’s voices. It is a depressingly predictable absence. It may seem a bit crude, but I wondered if you had considered this in terms of the kinds of images of women that you’re using in your work? PS: I think this is a really interesting question. I have never felt confident about representing black women’s resistance and would feel uncomfortable with my work being read like that. I am interested in relationships, not speaking for people. I am speaking for myself. Other people are involved of course and this has implications concerning race, class, gender. But what I did do in the earlier works, in, for example, the history paintings, is to place the presence of black women, as historical protagonists, in the frame, in the picture, on the historical stage. Yet even here there is an ambivalence which interests me. In later works it’s been different because I shifted focus into other aspects of power relations. The way representation of the struggle and in particular representations of women in the struggle has in fact now been taken up by people in power, by the ANC, for example, has

DOI link for try and represent, or signal, another kind of subjectivity for black women in South Africa, especially as a white woman. Related to this issue is the fact that many of the representations of black women in your work are representations of subjection. Do you think there could be a charge levelled at you in the sense that the images and the sign of black women in your work is constantly one of subjection, and that the voices and experiences of resistance and agency for example, are not actually present except in signalling the ambivalent relationship between the white child and the nanny? I ask because I’ve been very aware having just spent a few months in South Africa of the incredible ways in which any women who were committed to challenging the regime and involved in the struggle, but in particular black women, have been almost erased from representations of the history of the Liberation. You rarely see acknowledgement of the repercussions for women, of the ‘Bantu’ system or apartheid’s policy of ‘separate development’ which forced the women to carry on an independent life with very few resources, separated from their husbands, where they continued the struggle on the domestic front. I find it disturbing that there’s so little acknowledgement in the official representations of the struggle here of the activity of women. Even the famous domestic workers’ march in Pretoria in the 1950s is never chosen as one of the constantly repeated iconic images of the struggle. On the domestic front and in the homelands during apartheid, women were absolutely central. You could even say that black women made the whole thing possible. There seems to be a kind of amnesia about women’s struggles and women’s voices. It is a depressingly predictable absence. It may seem a bit crude, but I wondered if you had considered this in terms of the kinds of images of women that you’re using in your work? PS: I think this is a really interesting question. I have never felt confident about representing black women’s resistance and would feel uncomfortable with my work being read like that. I am interested in relationships, not speaking for people. I am speaking for myself. Other people are involved of course and this has implications concerning race, class, gender. But what I did do in the earlier works, in, for example, the history paintings, is to place the presence of black women, as historical protagonists, in the frame, in the picture, on the historical stage. Yet even here there is an ambivalence which interests me. In later works it’s been different because I shifted focus into other aspects of power relations. The way representation of the struggle and in particular representations of women in the struggle has in fact now been taken up by people in power, by the ANC, for example, has

try and represent, or signal, another kind of subjectivity for black women in South Africa, especially as a white woman. Related to this issue is the fact that many of the representations of black women in your work are representations of subjection. Do you think there could be a charge levelled at you in the sense that the images and the sign of black women in your work is constantly one of subjection, and that the voices and experiences of resistance and agency for example, are not actually present except in signalling the ambivalent relationship between the white child and the nanny? I ask because I’ve been very aware having just spent a few months in South Africa of the incredible ways in which any women who were committed to challenging the regime and involved in the struggle, but in particular black women, have been almost erased from representations of the history of the Liberation. You rarely see acknowledgement of the repercussions for women, of the ‘Bantu’ system or apartheid’s policy of ‘separate development’ which forced the women to carry on an independent life with very few resources, separated from their husbands, where they continued the struggle on the domestic front. I find it disturbing that there’s so little acknowledgement in the official representations of the struggle here of the activity of women. Even the famous domestic workers’ march in Pretoria in the 1950s is never chosen as one of the constantly repeated iconic images of the struggle. On the domestic front and in the homelands during apartheid, women were absolutely central. You could even say that black women made the whole thing possible. There seems to be a kind of amnesia about women’s struggles and women’s voices. It is a depressingly predictable absence. It may seem a bit crude, but I wondered if you had considered this in terms of the kinds of images of women that you’re using in your work? PS: I think this is a really interesting question. I have never felt confident about representing black women’s resistance and would feel uncomfortable with my work being read like that. I am interested in relationships, not speaking for people. I am speaking for myself. Other people are involved of course and this has implications concerning race, class, gender. But what I did do in the earlier works, in, for example, the history paintings, is to place the presence of black women, as historical protagonists, in the frame, in the picture, on the historical stage. Yet even here there is an ambivalence which interests me. In later works it’s been different because I shifted focus into other aspects of power relations. The way representation of the struggle and in particular representations of women in the struggle has in fact now been taken up by people in power, by the ANC, for example, has