As recipients of The Bag Factory’s Young Womxn Studio Bursary, Hemali Khoosal and Cheriese Dilrajh present In Passing, a joint exhibition exploring fleeting encounters. Both their individual and collective works will be on show at The Bag Factory Artists’ Studios from the 28th of August to the 17th of September 2021, with a walkabout on the 4th of September.

Cheriese thinks about what has travelled between waters and landscapes in relation to discovery and the maternal. She narrates personal, present and past histories by interweaving saris, installation, collage and projection.

As things are spoken and gestured into being, Hemali grapples with fragments of what passes her by. Her video installations, paintings, and prints depicts blurry and disorienting distortions, nostalgic visions, and rhythmic hands in motion. Gesture is explored as a channel of communication and an everyday metaphoric language.

As a duo, the artists started an oral histories project based in Fordsburg and Mayfair. Through recording conversations with people from these areas, they explored the layering of experiences of displacement. Their audio-visual installation focuses on the dynamic between ex-residents who were forcibly removed during the Group Areas Act, and people who have migrated from other countries more recently. The project reveals underlying past histories and current realities.

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