DI DIKADIKA TSA DINALEDI is a solo exhibition by Lerato Shadi which opens 4 September and closes 2 October 2016 at Goethe on Main, Arts on Main, Maboneng, Johannesburg. The exhibition is curated by Joan Legalamitlwa. DI DIKADIKA TSA DINALEDI is the artist’s way of placing herself in the world; as a woman, as a Black person, and as a South African. “Shadi’s body of work often investigates the ways in which one might negotiate a space for themselves in inhospitable locations; her work traces the edges of conflict on our bodies and psyches, following our attempts to feel our way beyond erasure, restricted as we are by exclusion, and the memory-house of our own memory of trauma. For artists who live on the coalface of historical erasure, their artistic practice becomes an obligation: to write, to record, archive what happens when one’s history and the record of one’s people’s existence is being erased.” Neelika Jayawardane. The artist feels acute responsibility for how she portrays the Black female body, reflecting on the ways it has been presented in the past, from examples of exploitation to dehumanisation. The juxtaposition between past and present becomes a leitmotif in her work. Although it is South Africa that is imbued in her work, the artist explores the politics of transformation through the locations that she finds herself in. In thinking about her own history and creating images that are re-imagining a new future. DI DIKADIKA TSA DINALEDI is an exhibition that fosters and encourages national dialogue about where we are as a nation and our ability to re-imagine a collective future. The exhibition puts forward questions of how is it possible to reimagine a future when our history has been systematically erased through various effective methods. We aim to raise awareness and foster dialogue around issues of historical representation and how that influences current narratives. We also think it is very important that the voice of all thypes of Black women from a variety of backgrounds need to be given space. The show places a spotlight on the Black female as subject and in charge of her own narrative. The performative installation for DI DIKADIKA TSA DINALEDI is SERITI SE: SERITI SE is a performance, drawing and installation that looks at the politics of historical erasure, specifically of Black females and their achievement and contributions within various fields. The work deals with absence and presence, subject and object and their transformation through the performative body. SERITI SE thematises everyday violence enacted within institutional structures and individual agencies and strategies within those systems. In SERITI SE names of historical PoC women—who have been excluded and erased from world history—are written on the white walls of the gallery. The performance consists of the audience being invited to choose a name and paint over the chosen name. In the act of erasing a name the gallery space turned back to white. No information is provided on who are the women on the wall therefore it becomes the duty of the one who is erasing the name to take responsibility for the name.
Photo: Herman Verwey