
Mary Sibande
Biography
Mary Sibande (1982) is a South African visual artist working across a variety of mediums, including sculpture, photography and printmaking. She received her B-Tech degree in Fine Art from the University of Johannesburg in 2007, and has since participated in multiple artists residencies across Europe and America, including the 2018-2019 Virginia C. Gildersleeve Professorship at Barnard College at Columbia University in New York, USA and the MAC/ VAL Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val- de-Marne in Paris, France in 2013. She won the Helgaard Steyn Prize for Sculpture in 2021, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Arts Award in 2017; and the 2013 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts.
Her work primarily explores how to reclaim the black female body in post-colonial and post-apartheid South Africa. Her work often portrays the artists alter-ego “Sophie”, a dreamer exploring worlds previously denied to her. She is many things, a domestic worker, a ruler, a general, a pope and more. Sophie is based upon Sibande herself, as well as the women in Sibande’s family, however, she is also a symbolic figure addressing many topics that remain relevant today, including blackness, femininity, labour and post-coloniality.
Sibande is co-founder of Occupying the Gallery, a project that aims to transform gallery spaces into makeshift open studios for mentorship and artistic development.
Collaboration History
News
Mary Sibande: Images of Leisure
In late 2023, Mary Sibande approached the David Krut Workshop (DKW) with an exciting opportunity to collaborate as part of...