Usha Seejarim

Photo credit: Mark Wessels

Usha Seejarim (b. South Africa) is a conceptual and socially engaged artist who uses found objects to communicate complex and simple ideas about the domestic position of women.

Seejarim holds a Master’s Degree in Fine Art from the University of The Witwatersrand. A Sculptor who has built an impressive record, through her reinterpretation of ordinary objects by making use of common materials such as wooden pegs, irons, and brooms. 

She created a number of public artworks including the great slate figures representing the South African Freedom Charter, The wings outside the Radisson Red Hotel, made from domestic iron bases in Rosebank, and is best known as the artist who produced the 2m high beaded portrait of Nelson Mandela, which formed the backdrop to his funeral in 2013. In August 2022, Seejarim presented The Resurrection of the Clothes Peg, a 13 meter, 40 ton steel sculpture of a clothes pin at Burning Man in Nevada USA, where she was awarded a honorarium and is the first African artist historically to exhibit in Burning Man. 

Seejarim was awarded the prestigious Chancellor’s Alumni Dignitas Award from The University of Johannesburg in 2021. She has presented over 14 solo exhibitions including Tethered Storyline at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda in 2022; Angel of the house at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town in 2021; Keepers of the Common at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Cape Town in 2018 and  Vessel of the Fish at Kunstinstituut Melly Centre for Contemporary Arts in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 2020.

https://www.smacgallery.com/artist-bios-1/usha-seejarim

Advisor: MFA