Notes

Tracy Rose’s video work Ciao Bella (2001), created for the 49th Venice Biennale, reimagines the Last Supper with the 13 original roles cast as female – all portrayed by Rose herself. Along with the work, she created photographic portraits of these 13 characters that ‘serve to introduce the audience to a series of feminine archetypes, refracted versions of womanhood that range from the coquettish Lolita to the oppressed object of wonder Saartjie Baartman, the self-neutered nun, and the ever-reliable mother figure standing at the gates to her Parktown mansion, among others.’¹ The present lot, MAQEII, depicts Rose as the former French monarch Marie Antoinette standing with chocolate cake in hand – a reference to her rumoured response of ‘let them eat cake’ upon hearing that her peasant subjects were starving – in front of an RDP settlement; a metaphor for inequality and social injustice in South Africa.

1. Sean O’Toole. (2002) Tracey Rose – ‘Ciao Bella’ at the Goodman Gallery, ArtThrob, (56), April, [Online] Available: https://artthrob. co.za/02apr/reviews/goodman.html [2018, December 7].

Exhibited

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Tracey Rose: Ciao Bella, 6 April 2002.

Gallery in the Round, Grahamstown, Tracey Rose: Ciao Bella, 2004.

Johannesburg Art Gallery, Making Waves, November 2004 to March 2005.

National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, Making Waves: A selection of works from the SABC Art Collection, 2006. Another example from the edition is illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue.