Thania Petersen

This work has been kindly donated by the artist

Thania Petersen (b. 1980, South Africa) is an artist whose reference points sit largely in Islam and in creating awareness about its religious, cultural and traditional practices. Threads in her work include the history of colonialist imperialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, as well as the social and cultural impact of westernised consumer culture. Her work is also informed by her ‘Cape Malay’ heritage, and the practice of Sufi Islamic religious ceremonies. 

Tanne Manne revises the way we see things, putting into question fictitious meaning and false cultures imposed onto groups of people by other groups of people. Often understood through othering lenses, Petersen uses cultural tropes like the ‘passion gap’ (gap-toothed smiles) situating her work within the context of the Cape Flats in Cape Town and its Cape-Malay community, while memorialising narratives of slave liberation when fleeing slaves would pull out their branded front teeth. Her work looks at food as activism and reciprocal cultural memory. She includes the ‘hertzoggie’ and ‘tweegevreetjie’ cookies in her composition in reference to the 1920s when the ‘‘Cape Malay’’ community was misled by a white politician, General Hertzog, in favour of their votes. The ‘Cape Malay’ community celebrated his election victory by gifting him the ‘hertzoggie’, while his later racist deceit is commemorated through ‘tweegevreetjie’ (two-faced) cookie.