Dineo Seshee Bopape, Resident Artist Lecture 2025

Dineo Sehsee Bopape gives a lecture talking about her artistic practice which spans poetry, music, drawing, sculpture, sound, and working with earthen materials, in particular soil mounds. Bopape begins the lecture by asking the following question: What does it mean to be dispossessed of land, and what does it mean to have no water, or sky? Bopape states how song and dance is a very big part of her work and life, and how this informs the research-based practice she has built, which consists of establishing personal connections with specific geographical, cultural, and political histories. Bopape tells the participants how people live not just in this reality but in other realities as well, and asks the question how does an artist’s work exist in multiple realities? Bopape states that art making has the ability to heal people in different ways, and when we connect to another person’s work, we acknowledge their existence which is a deeply spiritual thing and an important part of an art practice. Bopape then speaks in length about the way in which she views the earth and water being carriers of ancient memory, and the connection this has to her architectural interests which draw from African architectural philosophies about what space should do and how space holds these memories. Bopape then goes into detail about having a political practice as an artist and how that has allowed her to work with African philosophies, especially with the history that she has where African indigenous practices were violently erased in some areas. To be digging up and reclaiming this history is very important to Bopape.