At Risk: Representations of the female body and violence in the work of Penny Siopis and Gabrielle Goliath

-Zada Hanmer

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‘Shame is full of holes,’ said South African artist Penny Siopis in a Zoom discussion with art historian Griselda Pollock. This interview followed a 2021 exhibition of Siopis’ two seminal works, Shame (2002 – 2005) and Shadow Shame Again (2021). 

What does it mean for shame to be full of holes? Perhaps it means that shame is incomplete, useless, unhelpful. It leaves the personality in ruins and expects you to pick up its rejected pieces. It punches holes in self-confidence and tears the psyche apart.

These observations are present in Siopis’ work. Her Shame series began as a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was an attempt at cultivating social unity in post-apartheid South Africa. The commission’s primary task was the pursuit of truth – to discover and document various atrocities which occurred under apartheid, with information from both perpetrators and victims. Perpetrators were given amnesty, in line with the commission’s investigative focus. But this leaves the nation wanting. Punishment, retribution, justice. The commission seemed to remove the perpetrators from their consciences.

Siopis created the majority of the paintings for Shame during this period of ‘reconciliation’, perhaps as a response to the public baring of shame that occurred at the time. The series features paintings in red, white, and black, depicting scenes of discomfort. Phrases such as “I’m sorry,” and “Hug me,” are stamped and layered around the figures. The paintings are eerie tableaus which show the disturbances of the human psyche that are caused by violence. The figures are distorted, morphed, inhuman. They are bloody pools of paint, caught in painful vignettes.

The images seem to allude to South Africa’s underlying culture of violence. The figures often resemble children, engaging the viewer in the child’s perspective. The scenes are uncomfortable, and it is often unclear what the cause of the discomfort is at first. Perhaps the colour, the form, the use of line and space. Sometimes the figures seem recognisable, captured in an interaction or a domestic scene. Other times, they are completely alien. The figures are often crouched, lying down, or turned away, indicating a kind of shameful relationship with the viewer.

One painting features a crouched figure which looks like a female child. The colour of the paint is striking against the white background, which has the words ‘I’m sorry’ stamped across it. The figure bows their head in shame, a dark pool of paint flowing from their pelvis. It could almost be a shadow, but the crouched pose and the stamped words indicate otherwise – rather, the figure seems to be bleeding. The phrase ‘I’m sorry’ feels wasted, ingenuine. The damage has already been done. The blood-coloured paint gives the work an intimate, painful quality. The viewer is left to wonder what might have happened to the figure, and the conclusion can only be that they have endured trauma of some kind.

Shame (I’m Sorry), Penny Siopis (2002-2005), Mirror paint, oil, enamel, glue, watercolour, paper varnish and found objects on paper, 18.5 x 24.5cm

Image taken from Stevenson catalogue: http://archive.stevenson.info/docs/Penny_Siopis_Shame_Pioneers.pdf

In another painting, a dark mass crowds the frame, resembling a head. The paint is almost black, but has undertones of red, adding to the painting’s sombre mood. The figure seems to be staring, implicating the viewer. The angle of the ‘neck’ is unnatural, distorted, and there is a dark whorl of paint where the figure’s mouth should be. The image is quietly horrifying, pulling the viewer into the experience of trauma, challenging them to confront shame directly. The figure’s mouth is essentially absent, possibly alluding to the silence which sustains shame and violence – that survivors of violence are often shamed into silence. The swirls of paint spiral inward towards the mouth, drawing the viewer’s eye to this silencing.

Shame, Penny Siopis (2002-2005), Mirror paint, oil, enamel, glue, watercolour, paper varnish and found objects on paper, 18.5 x 24.5cm

Image taken from Stevenson catalogue: http://archive.stevenson.info/docs/Penny_Siopis_Shame_Pioneers.pdf

When asked about her various media, Siopis describes her use of mirror paint and the difficulties that came with it. Particularly the way the paint congeals and thickens. It has to be dripped in pools on the canvas before being scraped at and pushed around by a brush. This is perhaps part of the reason why Siopis hesitates to call the figures in her paintings ‘bodies’ or people. They often began as drops of paint, and what they resolved into was up to chance. Siopis used chance as a way to reach into the realm of the unconscious, to move into pain.

In some ways, mirror paint (lacquer) behaves like blood. It clots into cracked lumps and darkens in thick puddles. The cracks and wrinkles resemble skin, veins, wounds. So, while the ‘bodies’ in the paintings are not really bodies according to Siopis, in the behaviour of the medium itself, the body as a motif is found.

The Shame series also seems to allude to the experience of menstruation. A person’s first period is often a re-introduction to the realm of shame. There are new rules and regulations (don’t let boys see your pad, don’t let anyone know you’re bleeding), new sensations and feelings that need to be contended with. In many communities, menstruation is surrounded by taboo. The shame of finding blood on your clothes, on your sheets, on the seat of a chair, comes from a generation of transferred shame, which is rooted in misogyny.

The relation of the Shame paintings to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is perhaps less obvious than one might expect. However, sexual and domestic violence are distinctly racialised, and both stem from a culture of dominance that was inherent to colonialism. Within the context of apartheid and its aftermath, the relation between violence (of all forms) and coloniality has to be acknowledged.

Even today, black and brown women are at higher risk to violence than other women because of the structural inequalities that exist in South African society. These economic conditions of scarcity mean that black women are at higher risk of harm, in general, and are afforded fewer structures of support. I want to emphasise that this information is purely statistical – it holds none of the nuance that the subject of violence might demand. But data can be helpful in contextualising a nation-wide problem.

At the same time, the taboo surrounding gender-based violence in many communities perpetuates a culture of shame. Violence is used as a way to subdue and dominate, and the survivor (if they survive) is left to carry the shame of their experiences.

These realities come to the fore in the Shame series, particularly within the unique context of post-apartheid reconciliation. The paintings represent the layers of shame and trauma that exist in our society. The words “I’m Sorry” stamped in the backgrounds of some of the paintings indicate another side of violence: the enactor of the violence asking for forgiveness. The nature of the Shame paintings renders the phrase sour and useless. Once again, we are left wanting.

Almost two decades after the Shame series was first displayed, things have not changed. The series is still darkly relevant, almost prophetic, predictive of an unchanged and equally violent future.  

Enter Shadow Shame Again (2021). The short film, also by Penny Siopis, is a response to the death of Tshegofatso Pule. She was a 28-year-old pregnant woman who was found murdered, hanging from a tree. In many ways, the film can be seen as the counterpart to Shame. The two pieces address South Africa’s culture of violence, and in some ways, Shadow Shame Again feels like a refrain. The context for the film is different – on account of the steep rise in gender-based violence that occurred during lockdown in South Africa. The implications of a global pandemic became far more ominous than economic shutdown or the loss of human connection. The urgency and hurt and anger that is present in the Shame series is mirrored in Shadow Shame Again.

The film is made up of found home footage and depicts domestic scenes, overlayed with music and sound. Occasionally subtitles overlay the moving images:

‘every time / the same / shadow shame / no witness / but me / hanged / stabbed / raped / with child’

and so on. The grainy video and images – of women in Church dresses, of a running river, of an ancient tree – take on new meanings. They become omens, visual representations of the traumas that are often held in secret by the family unit and by society as a whole.

The soundscape changes as the film progresses. The sound of the rain gradually changing into disjointed clapping, coupled with the ever-changing video images, creates an eerie atmosphere. Then, iGwijo begins to play, replacing the rain and clapping. But the music provides no comfort. Instead, the quiet acapella becomes the next phase in the film’s chilling progression.

The whole film has this quietness. There is a feeling of repression, of secrecy. The film is a series of private home videos, and it almost feels as though the viewer is encroaching on something that should be kept hidden. Where the Shame paintings are silent tableaus, Shadow Shame Again introduces sound and movement. However, in the film there remains a sense of stillness. A quiet terror at the film’s meaning, at its dedication and its wider implications. Sometimes there is a paralysis which happens when things become too gruesome to comprehend. Siopis aptly calls the image of the young woman’s body a ‘locus of national shame.’

The first song’s form is call-and-response, with phrases alternating from the lead to background singers. Once again, meaning becomes layered with image, movement, sound, and now lyric:

         “Askies, I’m sorry, Mama. Askies, I’m sorry.”

         (“Senze ‘ntoni?”)

         “Balele, balele. Angakhal’ umama.”

         (“Angakhal’ umama”)

         In some versions of the song, there are other lines added:

         “Ngiyaz’ ukuthi ngiyenz’ iphutha, Mama. Ngicela ungixolele, Mama.”

These additional lyrics take on a different significance when paired with an analysis of the film’s context. “Balele” might mean something else entirely – allusions to the similarities between sleep and death are ever present in the song, regardless of which version you listen to. And once again, there are themes of regret, where someone is asking for forgiveness, this time from a mother figure. The words “I’m sorry” feature once again, like in the Shame paintings, and the effect is the same. The tragedy of violence cannot be repaired, and the words fall flat.

The film addresses not only the death of Tshegofatso Pule, but the deaths of the many other women who have gone before her, of the many women who will still be at the mercy of violence. South Africa’s legacy is tainted by blood. It smells of iron and congeals in dark, bloody lumps. Now, as we enter the fourth industrial revolution, our bodies are still at risk. How do we reconcile this?

To answer this unanswerable question, I find myself returning to Gabrielle Goliath’s essay, ‘This song is for... Inhabiting the scratch, performing the rhapsodic,’ and to the importance of context. The importance of race and gender, and about the differences of experience that come with these things. In her essay, Goliath writes about the 2019 exhibition of her own artwork This song is for… which addresses the impact that sexual violence has on the lives of survivors.  

Goliath paraphrases Sara Ahmed, who points out the violence of empathy when it is used as a claim to someone else’s pain. Empathy becomes a blanket characterisation which says, ‘I understand completely.’ In reality, this is impossible. There can be no world in which another’s pain is the same as your own. So, Goliath speaks of empathy not as a ‘feeling for,’ but rather as an acknowledgement of difference. Empathy then becomes a tentative reach – meeting another person across the chasm of difference. 

Goliath’s writing is intimate, and in some ways, the piece serves as a space for grievance and for grieving. I was struck by the sensitivity and care with which Goliath approaches the subject matter. She tenderly holds space for her subjects – the people who allowed her in, who gave her permission to tell their stories through their chosen songs.

The second time I read the article, I was able to follow the journey of the rhapsodic refrain. The artwork This song is for… consists of projected performances of songs chosen by survivors of rape, either as their comfort song, or as a reminder of the violence they endured. At a certain point during the performance of each song, the musicians catch on a phrase, repeating it over and over, again and again. Mimicking the scratch on a record.

The scratch is symbolic of the memory, the disturbance, of sexual violence, and the permanent impact it can have on a survivor’s life. The refrain is repeated almost until breaking point before the song is allowed to run its course. The release from the scratch feels euphoric, a final moment of relief before the next song begins and is caught again in the refrain. In This song is for… the viewer is implicated in the refrain, in the exploration of trauma and memory and mourning. The viewer is caught in the scratch, and the reader caught in the semantic refrain, before the rhapsodic relief.

The essay made me think about that ‘living death’ which is characterised by the scratch. Goliath speaks of rape as a kind of death – not so total in its erasure of the person, but just as final and disruptive as death itself. Violence of this kind endeavours to erase personhood, to negate what Goliath describes as ‘Black femme life.’

Pumla Gqola, writing on Goliath’s artwork, acknowledges the life textures that survivors continue to feel, even after their experiences. Life does not end totally – there is space for healing, for living abundantly in spite of everything. But there is still a wound which might never be fully healed, whose scar might never fade. The scratch always remains. 

For Tshegofatso Pule and the countless others who have lost their lives to violence, the refrain echoes into still air. For these souls, the record was broken, the needle torn away. And death becomes patriarchy’s final stand. It is the absolute negation of Black femme life.

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Reading List

Bosch, H., 1503-1515. The Garden of Earthly Delights. [Art] (Museo Nacional del Prado ).

Casale, D., Posel, D. & Mosomi, J., 2021. Gender and Work in South Africa. In: A. Oqubay, F. Tregenna & I. Valodia, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the South African Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Davidson, M. M. & Gervais, J. S., 2015. Violence Against Women Through the Lens of Objectification Theory. Sage Publications, 21(3), pp. 330-354.

Dolezal, L., 2015. The Body and Shame: Phenomenology, Feminism, and the Socially Shaped Body. London: Lexington Books.

Dreyfus, E., 2012. Shame and the Aesthetics of Intimacy: three contemporary artworks. New South Wales : University of New South Wales .

Finn, A. & Leibbrandt, M., 2017. The dynamics of poverty in South Africa, Cape Town: Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit, UCT.

Long, K., 2006. Swallowing Grandma. London: Picador.

Picasso, P., 1907. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. [Art] (The Museum of Modern Art ).

Picasso, P., 1937. Guernica. [Art] (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía).

Posel, D., 2014. Gender Inequality. In: H. Bhorat, A. Hirsch, S. M. R. Kanbur & M. Ncube, eds. The Oxford Companion to the Economics of South Africa. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Siopis, P., 2002-2005. Shame. [Art].

Siopis, P., 2021. Shadow Shame Again. [Art].

Swinney, N., 2020. Violence Turned In: Penny Siopis's 'Shame', Cape Town: ArtThrob.

Van Der Kolk, B., 2015. The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma. Great Britain: Penguin Books, Penguin Random House.

Walker, S., 2022. The Cherry Robbers. London: Serpent's Tail.

Weaver, T. L., Resnick, H. S., Kokoska, M. S. & Etzel, J. C., 2007. Appearance-Related Residual Injury, Posttraumatic Stress, and Body Image: Associations Within a Sample of Female Victims of Intimate Partner Violence. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 20(6), pp. 999-1008.