Exhibition

DINEO SESHEE BOPAPE: KGORO YA GO TŠWA: EVEN ?IF YOU FALL FROM A CIRCLE

STEVENSON, Cape Town, South Africa
06 Jun 2013 - 20 Jul 2013

Her surreal, room-invading installations and videos make Dineo Seshee Bopape one of the interesting voices of the young international art scene: Stevenson’s Cape Town space presents a solo show by the young Dineo Seshee Bopape.

 

Here she describes the show in her own words:

 

Even if you fall off a circle

the direct translation into English would be : the court for exiting…

Even if you fall off a circle-

Featuring the works

 

: »why do you call me when you know I can’t answer the phone » and « is I am sky » and other pieces, contemplating the idea-

the titles, of the show and of some of the works in the show are sourced/inspired by various sources…

a line from a poem by sun ra, a line from a text by andile mngxitama and a song by joan armatrading

It is not so much the song that gripped me, but that line- that line for some reason stuck in my head- resonating with particular moments in some of my current and older videos – where phones ring/a phone rings constantly without an answer, door bells, alarm clocks, bells etc.

…. like an invitation/ an unsettled proposal

an invitation that cannot be accepted: an invitation signalling a suspension of this (segment)

a call that goes unanswered…

(Who has to answer it? The protagonists in the video? Is it there to be answered or is it part of the cacophony)

The protagonists if any are oblivious to it-

 

Oblivion/ oblivious

Perhaps this call suggests an external begging presence…

An alarm of sorts, a warning, something that will change the course of everything, a disturbance, a frenzy

I imagine the title- sounding like a distant echo…

 

The show is comprised of some new video works… Which have been in the making for the past 2 years or so…

Some of the footage recurs in both videos- as it was edited simultaneously/ within the same time period…

I continue to work on ideas of memory, time, space, narration, trauma , displacement, nonsense etc.

I have been thinking of memory loss, inspired by how my father’s brain works…. He has for the past few years been afflicted with alzheimers, a disease/condition that kind of eats at one’s brain and memory.. things are forgotten, people, objects, language… the ways in which things relate- in language, in time… everything collapses

Things that once made perfect sense become illogical and alien…

It is a place where it is impossible to hold a cohesive narrative: because things are disjointed- everything is displaced , sense is temporarily/forever exiled…

Memory loss, a loss of self/subjectivity, displacement, self presence, a loss of frame, a loss of ground, a cavity that has been opened into a parallel space- where the rules are otherwise, where another perforated logic exists

A blur of context, a dissolution of context, suspension of sense, a loss of ground…

 

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