Zenaéca Singh

A BITTERSWEET HER-STORY

A Bittersweet Her-story (2024) features a series of six molasses-stained prints of colonial images of South African Indian women portrayed in roles shaped by colonial administration of indentureship and governance in South Africa. These molasses-stained photographs address the difficult question of what to do with the violent legacy of colonial archives. As an inheritor of these images, I grapple with how to engage them meaningfully without reinforcing violences of the image. Drawing on Weingarten and Bellamy’s (2020) concept of Inheritance, the images are stained with molasses that slowly drips off, revealing underlying details through viewer interaction. This slow revelation emphasizes a participatory reanimation of the archival image and offers agency to ancestors and their descendants in reshaping how their histories are re-presented. The process of obscuring beckons the viewer to look as an act of care.

Words by Zenaéca Singh

About Zenaéca Singh

Zenaéca Singh (b. 2000)’s work explores the complex history of the sugar economy in South Africa and its entanglement with migration, colonialism, labour exploitation, and the dynamics of the domestic sphere. Working across painting, sculpture and installation, she investigates archives of images and text related to indentured South African Indians in the period 1860–1911. Her current works draw primarily on family and archival photographs, transforming them into alluring paintings and assemblages made from sugar in different states of crystallisation.

Singh holds an MFA with distinction from the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art and is currently pursuing a PhD in Art History at UCT. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, Oxford Rhode House Gallery, Investec Cape Town Art Fair and 1:54 London Art Fair. Her museum commissions include 25 days for Fenix Museum of Migration in Rotterdam and Along the South Coast for the Rietberg Museum in Switzerland. In 2026, she joined Sharjah Art Foundation’s Artist Residency Programme.