The Invention of Sophie

Abstract

The figure of Sophie in Mary Sibande's visual artworks cannot be separated from a reading of ‘empire'. From the logic of empire and art history, the figure of Sophie is the invention of the colonial imaginary foregrounded on Eurocentric authority. Sophie is the outcome of modernity and its colonial logic of erasure that positioned the black body as a colonial subject whose ontology is lost in the figure of a maid. The maid is a political subject who endures colonial authority, and this endurance is limited to the political entanglement that creates her and sees her as a tool. This chapter is a decolonial critique of the figure of Sophie, intending to understand her significance regarding empire and art history. The chapter deploys thematic and conceptual analyses to explore the problems haunting Sophie and is grounded on the hypothesis that the problems haunting the maid reflect many things about modern contemporary society, including its past, present, and future.