LIZETTE CHIRRIME

EUR 7,000 + VAT

 Headless World, 2018

Mixed media

121 x 173 cm

About this work

‘I use African material because I am African’, says Cherrime – often offcuts from the materials shop opposite her studio. Here they form well-dressed dancing women whom we might see as celebrating their true selves beyond the constraints of daily realities. But they are headless, aside from their disconnected gaze. As Chirrime says, ‘despite their vast array of skills and creative talent… most of the time women put their ideas and skills in a drawer to go and wash other people’s clothes and clean their homes, for peanuts. They have two jobs because when they have finished their work for someone else they have to go home and look after their own homes and families.’

LIZETTE CHIRRIME BIOGRAPHY

Self-taught Lizette Chirrime (born Maputo, Mozambique, 1973) grew up regarding art as her therapy. She creates large-scale textile-driven works on canvas in her studio in Cape Town, collaging typical African fabrics to make a patchwork of shapes which coalesce into figures which are at once mystical, lively, and intense. She speaks directly to her inspiration: ‘These abstract forms evoke the human body and my identity-responsive practice where I refashion my self-image and transcend a painful upbringing that left me shattered and broken. I literally ‘re-stitched’ myself together. These liberated ‘souls’ are depicted ‘dancing’ on the canvas…’