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Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines representations of waterbodies in the works of contemporary South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape, and argues that her practice not only confronts ongoing histories of violence at sea but proposes the water as a critical site for new forms of art and memory making.

Contribution long abstract:

In his writing, TJ Demos demonstrates ways in which oceans have been figured in contemporary African diasporic experimental art as a “locus of terror and beauty” in which the “social, political, and ecological” are intertwined (2020). Using Demos’s reflection as a point of departure, this paper will examine representations of waterbodies in the works of contemporary South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape, and argue that her practice offers critical oceanic historiographies and unorthodox modalities for art and memory making.

Focusing on the multidisciplinary installations Bopape created after 2016 – which present video, drawing, sculpture and sonic elements – I will study the artist's use of imagery, matter and soundscapes from the ocean to hypothesize that her works not only confront ongoing histories of violence at sea but propose the water as a fertile site for artistic experimentation and below-the-surface worldviews.

As the installations of Bopape engage waters across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, her works address complex aquatic ecologies, African diasporic cosmologies and obfuscated narratives of subjugation/resistance. In mapping a labyrinth network that traverses space and time, aesthetics and subjectivities, this paper emphasizes Bopape’s practice as provoking rigid structures established by maritime boundaries, linear temporalities and dominant art logic. Moreso, I aim to explore how transoceanic and transdisciplinary methodologies in the practice of Bopape encourages shifts in archival approaches and helps realize liberatory futures.