Bridget Baker was born in 1971 in East London, Eastern Cape. Her father died when she was five, and her mother remarried the following year to an evangelical Christian minister. The youngest of four siblings, Baker has said of her upbringing, “My mother escaped into Christian never-never land, taking us with her.”
Since apartheid was still firmly in place, as a white pupil Baker went to the then “whites only” Clarendon Girls High School in East London and attended numerous classes, from Sunday School, to ballet, to swimming, receiving certificates of attendance or honor along the way, which she kept as mementos of her childhood.
On leaving home to go to art school at the University of Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, in 1990, Baker actively moved away from “repressive Christian notions” of belief and faith. When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings began in 1996, she also became increasingly aware of the real nature of the apartheid society and the terrible damage that it had inflicted on the country.
Baker says, “The TRC created public opportunities for ordinary people to speak out about the political and private atrocities that had happened to them during the apartheid years. This was a sanctioned space to apologize and to be heard for the first time.” The stories that emerged during the TRC hearings of mothers whose sons simply disappeared without a trace resonated strongly with Baker’s own sense of personal loss.
When her father died, her mother had believed that in order for the family to survive his death, mourning should be vetoed: The youngest children did not go to the funeral, and life just carried on. Says Baker, “In terms of the death of my father, I now wanted to acknowledge that I missed him.”
In So It Goes (1996) four tiny round tins filled with Vicks VapoRub, the ointment rubbed on the chests of sick children, were mounted on the wall. In each tin Baker placed small images of the only photo she had of herself and her father together, in which he is teaching her how to swim. In the first tin the photo is visible. By the last, it has sunk from sight beneath the VapoRub.
For Baker’s second solo show, at the Hänel Gallery in Cape Town in 1997, the artist floated kickboards, inflatable swimming aids, on the surface of the water of a portable swimming pool. Baker had hand-embroidered each with facsimiles of one of her achievement certificates, earned when she was growing up.
As a child, Baker had believed these achievements, such as the Special Award for Enthusiastic Service and Support, given by the Clarendon Girls High School in 1989, would help keep her afloat through the stormy seas of life. Once out of the cocoon of mediated information, it was clear to Baker that, like an easily punctured kickboard, these skills were of limited value.
Bridget Baker—BAFA (Stell.), BA Hons. (FA) (Stell.), MFA (UCT) cand. 1996–97
90 cm x 274 cm diameter
Porta-pool, 17 embroidered kickboards, plastic, cotton, valves
Installation view: Hänel Gallery, Cape Town
Collection: Old Mutual
Photographer: Ulrich Wolff
Image courtesy of the artist
© Bridget Baker
Bridget Baker—BAFA (Stell.), BA Hons. (FA) (Stell.), MFA (UCT) cand. (detail) 1996–97
90 cm x 274 cm diameter
Porta-pool, 17 embroidered kickboards, plastic, cotton, valves
Installation view Hänel Gallery, Cape Town
Collection: Old Mutual
Photographer: Ulrich Wolff
Image courtesy of the artist
© Bridget Baker
So It Goes 1996
Tins, photographs, Vicks Vaporub
3.5 x 2 cm each
Photographer: Bridget Baker
© Bridget Baker