Dineo Seshee Bopape

“We were drawn to her nuanced and delicate work at the sixth edition of the Marrakech Biennale last year and are thrilled by working with her this year in Rotterdam to place a bookend to our Para | Fictions series.”

“Her work revolves around the process of creation, rather than a belief in research or a particular canon. Simply put, she learns what the piece will be by making it.”

“What struck us was the way in which Dineo managed to make work that was very personal, intimate even, but did so with very common materials.”

“Real life requires one to perform many adjectives (for example being woman/happy/doctor/young/in love/friend/older sister....there are varying conventions that dictate how certain adjectives are activated), and for people or objects to participate in the world, i guess they have to perform--well, i guess we make objects perform--through their use, their place in language. i am interested in objects performing passively...alluding in a very scattered way to disparate things, somehow dancing their colours, textures, thingness with other things...and their thingnesses too.”

“Life itself is quite ‘kaleidoscopic’ and surreal. Perhaps as an artist or a ‘self,’ it is an assemblage of possibilities, probabilities and the real as more strange than the fiction. The fictions also are too heavy.”

“My focus is to separate what has created the self [and] what is the representation of personality and group identity.”

“I think everybody is a post-colonial artist; we’re all living in post-colonial societies.”