In Dineo Seshee Bopape installations and videos, the historical backdrop of his local South Africa prompts reflections on memory and authority over land and bodies corresponding to the encounters experienced by Africans.
Dineo Seshee Bopape‘s exhibition « Lerato le le golo (…la go hloka bo kantle) » can be enjoyed at the Vienna Secession until June 12, 2022 and presents his work that is motivated by his prescription for a visual, acoustic and material language that summons an indigenous style.
Dineo Seshee Bopape communicates through his work the strength and reclamation of individuals in the African diaspora, as well as their sustained energies of opposition, emancipation, and traversal of the savagery of the racially oppressive human-centered network. While making art from carefully chosen ordinary materials such as earth, clay, cloth, plants, vessels, paint and advanced media. Their material and representational properties frequently appear in discussions with thoughts about legislative issues, style, self-transcendentalism, brain and relationship, oscillation, presence, home, earth and waters, language, melody and memory…
At vienna Secession, Dineo Seshee Bopape has created another installation that transports guests with its extraordinary authenticity. The space is embraced by pink light and charged with the murmur of bees. Knee-high vaults and compressed earth partitions communicate in the language of this vaporous thing delivered and sheltered by the structure by means of the design of outdoor spaces enclosed by courtyards in some traditional African cities.
These create a development and construction in liquid spatial twist between inside and outside, near the central point of the work, and propose an entrance… a gateway.
The round droppings in the floor at one of the central points of the sets reflect an infinite grouping and structure, relating to earlier periods of Dineo Seshee Bopape‘s work. Like the bowls and earthen vessels, they act as compartments, containers, openings or instruments of summons and landmarks to evoke, among other things, thoughts.
Dineo Seshee Bopape‘s group of components is stacked with social, political and representational implications. Among the various lore she draws from is the ancient Southern African creation story that water was brought into being by the impact of rock and fire.
This story, like others, was suppressed during colonization and was deciphered as a test for the European project of leveling, the vanguard, the Christian, the mere political personality of Western Europe…
Like any creation story, it is a source of personality and orientation towards the world. How to interpret this story from the beginning of the world to the present ?
Dineo Seshee Bopape‘s methodology as an artist is an instinctive excursion through this set of experiences, focusing less on representation and more on the connections at play.
For her, there are potential outcomes to examine and re-examine or to try and dream of new opportunities in the layers between heaven and earth… In her installation, Dineo Seshee Bopape makes an exchange of encounters and implications as a springboard to further discernment and as medicine for the woman… The different associations of the question, life and soul are sung through the title of the exhibition « Lerato le le golo (…la go hloka bo kantle) » which translates to « an incredible love (…that has no exterior) ».
The poetic line in SePedi, the local language in South Africa, alludes to the connection between things… An inclination that spreads in the smell of the rain on the African land splashed with intensity… « Pula » not to say « downpour », precious in its local land, is inseparable from life, maturity and wealth. In SePedi, it is often evoked in the melodies as an enhancing presence/witness, an opportunity.
There is an erotic nature frequently evoked in the transitional services … what’s more, those that praise the land and maturity … likewise in the discourse with the various indigenous stories, a flow of the treatment of the land by the sky by means of a downpour, and frequently including the creation snake as if something of the reclamation were in question.