Dineo Seshee Bopape’s engrossing biography embeds her birth into a matrix of same-year events in a diffusion of the self that shows how each one of us is irrevocably intertwined with and, in essence, the product of a kaleidoscopic coincidence of circumstances. That same expanded perspective, and sense of unseen connections, infuses her site-specific installations with a unique spirit. The South African artist often uses natural materials such as clay, soil, ash, and plants that, for her, act as repositories of memory, place, and identity, embodying belonging and primordial knowledge.
Her current exhibition “Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape: (ka) pheko ye—the dream to come,” an immersive, multisensory environment that debuted at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki last fall, positions us in a village-like setting where we can redraw ties across the built and natural worlds, past and present, and geography. The exhibition was born, in part, out of research done in Finland; Bopape visited petroglyphs, a bog, and a landfill, studied local traditions and healing herbs, and collaborated with experts at an organic farm to produce a scent and a special tea, Raisibe Dreaming (2023), to promote dreaming. Video, sound, and light effects underscore the possibility of alternate visions, directions, and ways of being. For Bopape, who temporarily amended her name to Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape, “Raisibe” plays a key role. The name is usually assigned to a child born en caul, which is considered in many cultures to confer protection, luck, and second sight. The impact of this richly complex project, at once evocative and nurturing, is long-lasting—and heartening.
John Gayer: When I walked into “(ka) pheko ye—the dream to come,” the energy of the space was palpable—it felt almost alive. Perhaps it was the arrangement and variety of your structures, or
the elements placed within them; I felt like I was being directed, or guided, to explore.
Dineo Seshee Bopape: That makes me wonder: What is it that makes it feel alive, the fresh herbs, their smell? As it happens, the idea of materials being alive is something I discussed with Ulla Philips, an artist working with natural materials and a member of the technical team at Kiasma who helped to make some of the works. The clay, for instance, is a living entity. As long as it stays unfired, it breathes. While building up the walls of the structures, I was also consciously thinking that they needed time to breathe before coming back to them again.
JG: I was particularly fascinated by the presentation of the video. The images are projected onto a bowl-like form on the floor. Was the bowl cast or made of real stone?
DSB: That rock was hollowed out naturally. I’m not sure how the idea of projecting into its bowl developed. It just arrived. Sometimes my work originates from dreams, sometimes from doodles.
JG: There is something dreamlike about it, especially in the way that the stone and the projections of material floating on water change appearance. Soup-making aligns with vegetation and constellations.
DSB: The work is related to making tea, soup, and herbal remedies. The images of herbs being stirred into water derive from the testing and production of teas that we did at the Frantsila herb farm. There are moments when the stone seems two-dimensional, or the seeds disappear.
JG: The neighboring structure, made of fine-grained soil, reminds me of a model delineating landforms. Its stasis, low profile, and bone-dry presence contrast markedly with the characteristics of the video work. It is also more abstract.
DSB: Those are all things I see in the work, which embodies multiple sources. The large L-shaped element has been appearing in my work for years. It originally materialized in my studio, where I cut it out of fabric and set assorted objects on it. It also refers to games played in South Africa. For example, the game “Who is creating the world” involves forming universes out of dust and carving different things out of soil. And then it alludes to mounds, traditional architecture, and painting—I recall thinking of Rothko’s work. It also encompasses aspects of urban architecture—the museum, for instance. Since it includes a chair, it also functions as a courtyard. The fact that people might walk on its elements, though, concerned the museum.
JG: That explains the partial cordon. You took a sensitive approach to the situation.
DSB: For me, using the museum’s barriers didn’t seem right.
JG: The low height of the structure proposes a close relationship to the group of clay blocks near the center of the installation. That configuration also comes across as a model, but a more clearly architectural one, and the space also happens to be off limits. At Kiasma, you isolated the work by adding cord, ribbon, and other materials to the stanchions. Such extra touches accompany all of your structures. What roles do they play?
DSB: These materials all have different vibrations. There are reeds, which grow in water, wood from the forest, feathers, and copper, which might be from South Africa. The colors of the materials—how they appear in light—influenced my choices. I was also thinking about how this cordon—boundary, barrier, or protection—functions. It conveys a fragility, a feeling not quite of danger, but there is the need to be careful in terms of one’s engagement.
Questions such as where this configuration might be sited and whether it springs from the past or the future remain open. I made the first version at the PinchukArtCentre in Kiev in 2018. Those earlier shapes inform this version, but soil from different parts of the world were used in the initial work. Here, I included rosemary. Such differences shift the reading somewhat.
JG: The materials used in the cordon not only link various life forms and environments, but are also representative of the seemingly endless variation that marks the presentation, which is not static. Viewers’ experiences depend on the days or times of their visit.
DSB: The changes are also manifested in the soundscape, which is marked by moments of silence, and the lighting, which also shifts. Trickling water recorded in Carrara, Italy, is part of the sound element. This water makes its way from the mountain onto the marble. I’ve also been taking pictures of holes, some of which are included in the show. While making these images, I thought about David Lynch and how he uses openings to lead his characters to other worlds. My images may reference falling water, or an invitation into another space, the underworld.
JG: There are also animals in this world. I noticed a small moose and a gorilla, among others. What are they made of?
DSB: They are plastic forms. I wanted to source locally made wood or ceramic figures from second-hand stores, but they were quite difficult to find. Such toys allude to something primal. A child or even an adult might choose to have a zebra, for instance, because they are stimulated by the animal’s spirit or merely delight in living with its representation.
JG: Flower shapes are actualized as neon lights and molded clay forms, and images of flowers are painted or projected onto the walls.
DSB: The flower shapes have been appearing in my work for years, and images of real flowers appear in my videos. About 10 years ago, I made stickers using flowers indigenous to southern Africa and the African continent. At the time, I was thinking about flowers in relation to landscape, to social memory, the flowers used to decorate fabrics—many of which were introduced by the British. Because the apartheid government made extensive use of these flowers, heavy politics were attached to them. How, then, to approach the idea of a national flower outside of that? How to re-familiarize the material that holds particular memory, meted for itself, including the past—all the pasts that it has?
JG: Were you looking for an alternative native flower to be this symbol?
DSB: It was more about being able to reconnect with one’s surroundings via a flower that is local, especially since we had been taught to look only at flowers deriving from external sources—the rose, for example, was the primary flower used for decoration.
JG: Their use follows strict guidelines, then?
DSB: Yes. The question of how to assess flowers also led to considering flowers that have been indigenized, but that’s a sidetrack. That project is slightly related to another work, which represents a register of different generations. Imagining myself at the center of this scheme, I was mapping the distances to my father, grandfather, great-grandmother, and so on.
JG: The structure of that work is so organic and ornate, I didn’t see it as a family tree.
DSB: It’s a family tree or a generational map. Anybody can fit into it. So, then I thought: “Well, if this is the 1800s, what was happening in the life of my family or in South Africa at that time?” What was the conversation between these two points, for example? It could relate to the flowers that were present, things affecting the land, weather conditions, and other developments that could be affecting our time. This is an ongoing process.
JG: This reminds me of I Re-member Mama (2023), which you showed at the Helsinki Biennial. What is the significance of the hyphen?
DSB: I was thinking about remembering as a process of realignment, of connecting to a disconnected member of the self. So, re-membering the mother—or Mama—refers to the maternal as or within me, as well as to the social mother or the earth mother. It’s about being in conversation with her, about being re-membered back into community with the earth, community with myself, and lineages from different times. I have also been thinking about the maternal in my work, the place of the feminine in myself, in this time, in other women, and in men, too. Some of these motifs keep recycling, and some material from that work was also recycled and reused in this installation.
JG: Dreaming and memory are intertwined in your work. When you speak of dreaming, though, I sense that you mean more than daydreaming or dreaming while asleep.
DSB: There are those ways, but I have also been doing research into the different ways that people facilitate dreaming within African communities and what would be done with the dreams, which serve individuals, as well as the collective. I am interested in the dream processes of different cultures—how to support the dream and how to dream in dream-life and in this life as well. Seeing the earth as a dreaming material. There is the idea that we were dreamt into being by the earth and those who have come before us, as well as the process of co-dreaming with plants. We also have the history of the pineal gland—symbolically represented by the pinecone—and different societies’ use of the pinecone and herbs that promote dreaming, which spans thousands of years. I’ve also been looking at the ancient dream temples of the Egyptians, who went to specific places to dream.
JG: Might that involve meditation?
DSB: It could be dreaming and meditation. In that state, you are sentient to this other world where things happen differently. The Greeks also had dream temples for physical maladies, where people were encouraged to dream in order to promote healing. Whatever problem was affecting them could be resolved inside the dream. That is another motif that repeats across cultures. Through the dream or inside the dream world, the facilitation of healing should or could happen. So, how does one then enter that space of allowing oneself to receive healing? And, also, what is that space where healing happens? Who or what is in that space, and how might the different elements interact with each other?
JG: What I appreciate about sitting in your courtyards—in addition to the wonderful handcrafted benches of brick and wood—is how no two are the same. Some are open, others walled off, and their contents manifest unique arrangements. Do these courtyards relate directly to your cultural back- ground or are they more general creations?
DSB: Both. They reflect courtyards in the region around Polokwane where I am from, which is in
the northern part of South Africa. We have similar courtyards, but the height of the walls can vary greatly. There is also part of the home that is a dedicated area, where people would have a shrine to the family. These works are abstractions of those features.
Some years ago, I did a research trip to Senegal in West Africa, where I saw courtyards that reminded me of South African courtyards. But they were smaller and located in public spaces. Because Islam is the main religion in Senegal, these were spaces where people would pray. I have also been looking at temporary churches or temples in South Africa, which may consist of placed rocks that are then declared to be a place of worship. So, in addition to marking out areas that could hold sacred ceremonies—creating spaces that would invite such activity—I also saw the courtyard spaces as retainers that hold the memories of the constellation of activities that have passed through them.
Such practices were suppressed during colonialism and apartheid. Revisiting them is critical today. These events also relate to the generational map. What kind of memories make up those timelines? How might their configurations have differed? What shapes would the courtyards have taken? Square courtyards began appearing during the 1900s under European influence, for example. Before that, they tended to be more circular.
JG: People sometimes forget that the African continent embodies tremendous diversity. Dozens of cultures, and hundreds of local languages, can lie within the borders of some countries.
DSB: That is true. Even saying that my work is influenced by South African courtyards is not exactly correct. The Zulu courtyards—especially their traditional courtyards—are quite unique, and the Boer/Afrikaans courtyards, which developed during the 1700s, are also different.
JG: One of your courtyards is occupied by a dome. A beautiful aroma pervades the space, and the clay pushed through the chicken wire armature creates an inner surface with a striking texture.
Is the accompanying broom-like object meant to echo the birch whisks used in Finnish saunas? DSB: It’s more broom than sauna whisk, and it is also related to the maternal or female. I had originally wanted to bring some brooms from South Africa, which didn’t happen. Then, I realized I just needed to attach a handle to a bunch of branches for it to look like the classic broom in witches’ stories.
JG: You live and work in Johannesburg, but I am curious about your background in northern South Africa. Can you say something about the character of Pedi society and culture?
DSB: Women and men each have their roles, but over time there have been waves of change. For example, Christianity shifted how one perceived the self, others, and the rules of others, as well as women’s and men’s relationships to the land. The land politics of South Africa is something I keep studying, especially how it influenced the behavior of people at different times, primarily in terms of what was disallowed.
“Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape: (ka) pheko ye—the dream to come” is produced in collaboration
with Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich, where it is on view through September 8, 2024.
