The 2022 iteration of The Armory Show features artist Mary Sibande's “Ascension of the Purple Figure,” as part of the fair’s Platform section—a branch of the fair that has been running since 2016 and is dedicated to large-scale, site-specific works. @marysibande @thearmoryshow Organized by Tobias Ostrander, the curator of Latin American Art at the Tate in London, this year’s edition of Platform titled “Monumental Change,” examines how recent revisionist practices, which are part of dramatic cultural shifts occurring throughout the world, are influencing artists’ engagement with sculptural form. As a gesture toward monumentalizing herself, with this sculpture, “Ascension of the Purple Figure,” we see Sophie, Sibande's avatar, stepping up onto a pedestal. She wears a purple Victorian-style dress that recalls the aesthetics of the British Colonial Empire. Representing this persona’s purple phase, the color addresses the spirit of constructive resistance encapsulated by the Purple Rain protests in South Africa during apartheid, during which authorities sprayed protestors with purple ink from water cannons, intent on marking them and making them easier to arrest. Hundreds were indeed rounded up and jailed, yet protestors commandeered one of the cannons and turned it on the governing party’s legislative offices. After the riot, graffiti around the city foretold, “The purple shall govern.” Purple is also a reference to clergy and royalty, two authoritarian forces in colonial Africa. Here, Sophie has adorned herself in purple garb, as she ascends with dignity into her new role. Beneath her purple clothing, we can see hints of her next phase, the red phase. For Sibande, red expresses the contemporary frustrations of Black South Africans, a chromatic choice stemming from the Zulu aphorism, “ie ukwatile uphenduke inja ebomvu,” meaning “he is angry, he turned into a red dog.” The artist not only addresses the many faces of herself and Sophie in this work, but also the complex personhoods of all African women who continue to create worlds and narratives outside of the canon of Western Imperialism. Pictured: Mary Sibande, “Ascension of the Purple Figure, 2013.