Dineo Seshee Bopape

Audioguide

Are we looking at the remains of a foundation? A garden? A stage? On top of the carefully arranged piles of bricks, Dineo Seshee Bopape has arranged various materials: sand, earth, clay, gold leaf, charcoal, ash, herbs and incense. Her installation is a memorial against forgetting. Texts are inscribed on small wooden plaques, detailing acts of resistance by African people, challenging the assumption that Africans did not oppose the slavery and colonisation.

This installation also commemorates Robert Sobukwe, an anti-apartheid activist who co-founded the Pan African Congress and was imprisoned on Robben Island. While kept in solitary confinement, Sobukwe apparently greeted new political prisoners by picking up a handful of soil and clasping it in his fist. Bopape alludes to this by including hundreds of small clay objects formed by the clenched fists of African immigrants in her installation. They reference the power to shape the future through collective action.

The song of the colourful quetzal bird from South America, which dies if kept in captivity, rings out from the record players arranged around the room. There's also the sound of waves, which the artist recorded on the shores of the African continent. With this soundscape of birdsong and the ocean, Bopape evokes the memory of the men and women transported to the Americas as slaves.