Fine Arts Lecture Series – Usha Seejarim

Invited by the class of Ingo Vetter

South African artist Usha Seejarim is known for her conceptual works and spatial installations, in which she uses everyday and household objects to question gender roles, labour and power relations. She has created a multifaceted oeuvre in international exhibitions, in which the materiality of the artefacts used plays a central role. This reflection on physical presence and its effect on the viewer led her to public art. In South Africa, she has been able to realise numerous public artworks and participatory projects over the last 25 years. Perhaps her most well-known work was a indigenous seed portrait of Nelson Mandela, which formed the backdrop to his funeral ceremony in 2013.

In 2023, her proposal ‘Force - Death by Drowning’ won the competition for the ‘Memorial to the Victims of Human Rights Violations’ in front of the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus in Bremen. She is now coming to Bremen to realise the project and in this context also to the university of the arts. In the public lecture, she will talk about her artistic work and the proposed memorial.

More information on her homepage and at the Senate press office.