Young Malay Maiden with Black Hair

Oil on Canvas
65.5 x 55cm (excl. frame)
81 x 70.5 x 4.5cm (incl. frame)
Signed: “Irma Stern” (Upper/Left)
Dated: 1938

Illustrated & Referenced:     Graham’s Fine Art Gallery. 2008. The Modern Palimpsest: Envisioning South African Modernity. Graham’s Fine Art Gallery, Johannesburg. p. 56 & 57

“Young Malay Maiden with Black Hair” is a secretive painting, allowing the viewer into the intimate world of the sitter. At face value, it is a portrait of a young girl dressed in a white bodice, her erect nipples showing through the fabric, and green pants, showing an exposed thigh, against a bright purple background. The title identifies her as Malay, which makes this a rather controversial depiction of a Muslim woman. According to the Muslim faith, devout women are not allowed to expose themselves to the extent that this woman has done in Irma Stern’s painting.

Stern wrote pointedly about veiled women in her book Zanzibar (1948:79), saying that all Eastern countries have a way of “hiding their women”.

This woman, however, is brave enough to challenge such conventions: she is an emancipated woman who makes her own decisions and negotiates her identity and her sexuality in another way, other than the traditional observation of religious norms and standards. As such, this painting depicts emancipation in its purest form.

Stern captures that sense of freedom, of breaking the shackles of convention in this work. She identifies with the quest of a young woman in search of her identity as she herself battled to that end when she was young. This is made abundantly clear in Karel Schoemann’s biography (1994) Irma Stern; The Early Years (1894 – 1933).

Schoemann draws extensively on Stern’s writing and literary output to infer that she was “both an interesting individual and a gifted artist” (1994:7). One gets the same sense of the young Malay woman.