Page 31 - WOA9-eMag

Dineo Seshee Bopape. Dineo Seshee Bopape, 2018. Installation view Pinkchuk
Art Center, Kiev. Image courtesy Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev. Artwork courtesy
the artist & Sfeir-Semler Gallery Beirut / Hamburg. Photo: Maksym Bilousov &
Valentina Tsymbaliuk

Bopape continues her research into ideas of sovereignty
DINEO SESHEE BOPAPE and self-possession—physical, spiritual, psycho-emotional,

The Museum of Modern Art | PS1 biological, and political—through soil and clay sourced from
the sites of various slave rebellions. Bopape reconstitutes
earth’s matter in all of its changing and evolving states, from
solid earth to soil to clay to dust, into new artistic form. The
FMoMA PS1 will present the first US museum exhibition installation incorporates material from sites including New
of artist Dineo Seshee Bopape (b. 1981 Polokwane, South York City, which was a major hub for the transatlantic slave
Africa) from April 5 to September 7, 2020. On view in the trade in the eighteenth century and the site of a famous
double-height Duplex Gallery, Bopape’s new, site-specific 1712 slave revolt near present day Canal Street; Montreal,
installation is comprised of dense accumulations of soil and Canada, where in 1734 Portuguese-born slave Marie-
clay sourced from multiple sites across the Americas and Joseph Angelique set fire to her owner’s home resulting in
Africa that mark historic rebellions by enslaved peoples. a massive fire that burned down much of what is now Old
Montreal; and N’Der, Senegal, where in 1819 the women
Dineo Seshee Bopape’s charged, poetic installations of the Walo tribe, knowing an incoming invasion from the
often combine video, sound, ceramic, found objects, and Moors would result in their capture and enslavement,
other substances both organic and inorganic. This new chose to die together by mass suicide, gathering in a home
commission builds on the artist’s recent work at the San with their children and setting it on fire. Bopape’s work at
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, we can’t afford not to MoMA PS1 underscores how an individual remembering and
mourn (2019), which was comprised of a large soil cube honoring their personal sovereignty amounts to a potent act
casting shadows and reflections into and through the of rebellion.
surrounding space. Organized by Jocelyn Miller, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1.

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