Exhibition Details

Southern Guild Cape Town is pleased to present Unfolding Servitude by Usha Seejarim, a solo exhibition of assemblage sculpture. This body of work interrogates the domestic sphere as a site of servitude, subversion and resilience through an intersectional lens. Found objects emblematic of domestic labour – such as clothes pegs, ironing soleplates, brooms and serving trays – are repurposed and reframed to explore themes of oppression and agency in relation to gender, race and class.
In the repetitive acts of assembling, Seejarim evokes the relentless, cyclical nature of domestic labour – traditionally gendered as women’s work. She deliberately reconfigures these items to highlight the interplay between the materials’ original function and the denial of their utilitarianism through art-making, transforming symbols of domesticity and containment into objects of liberation and ambiguity. Instruments of cleaning, folding, holding, washing, pressing and smoothing become statements of resistance and individuality.
 
Seejarim’s abstraction of these objects – negating their intended purpose to become vessels of collective memory – is an act of liberation, not only for the physical things themselves, but also for the location of women in relation to capitalist consumption. Unfolding Servitude gives voice to invisible labour while simultaneously critiquing the systems that advocate these roles.