Evil is Banal
This painting is based on a photograph of the artist looking over her shoulder. She is in her forties, smiling, with long, flamboyant orange hair. Her light blue eyes are fixed on something outside the work, and her chin rests on her hand.
The bright self-portrait contrasts dramatically with its title, which refers to Hanna Arendt's controversial report on Nazi bureaucracy and the chilling normality of evil. This gap between the image and the word takes the painting to another dimension. Dumas clearly draws a parallel between the Nazi regime and the policies and practices of apartheid. In the mid-1980s, when she finished this painting, apartheid was at its height. Dumas joined other South African artists engaged actively in diverse political, social and cultural critique and resistance. Under this new light, the portrait here tends to be interpreted differently. Dumas in the painting does not seem as light but much more thoughtful. She looks behind her, to where she comes from, with an ironic smile. As a white person in South Africa, using a self-portrait is a strong political statement, making the painting even more powerful. Questioning her own identity, Dumas places herself with humility as a potential perpetrator of evil acts and glances at the viewer as if saying: It could have been me, it could have been you.
