ditshwantsho, dipalo, digopotso
Refiloe Namise
17 August — 07 September 2024
Bag Factory Artists’ Studios
Bag Factory is pleased to present ditshwantsho, dipalo, digopotso, a solo presentation by Refiloe Namise, comprising re-placed archive prints, video, performance, remembrances and readings.
Namise’s work explores the making and preserving of a place: Alexandra, Johannesburg. Through various sites in Alex, her work re-members and re-articulates particular moments and their broader histories. These engagements develop ways of writing, recording, storing and sharing social knowledge, heritage and culture.
Through this exhibition-in-progress, this year’s David Koloane Award recipient explores the idea of the Open Studio. The project’s title ditshwantsho, dipalo, digopotso, meaning ‘images, readings, reminders’ is uncapitalized to connote their existence within broader contexts. Just as the specific meanings of these words shift in response to their context, so too, the interpretations of Namise’s research are left open-ended, resolving themselves through their performance. In the Open Studio, the concepts of “research” and “artwork” become synonymous. Namise’s primary media being experimentation and intuition, many things come to realisation only in the realm of their public presentation.
As Namise’s research grapples with the idea of off-site site-specificity, ditshwantsho, dipalo, digopotso remarks on the movements that happen between the Studio as a place of work, the Archive as place of storage and the original Site as the place from which research materials to be worked on and stored (conversations, protestations, everyday lives) are gathered. Photocopies of newspaper clippings found in the Wits Hitstorical Papers Research Archive, hang alongside a video projection, and remembrances of her onsite interventions. As archives may not leave the library, their photocopying returns them to the very public whose lives they document. This re-placement of these texts to their site of origin opens the possibility of their rereading and reinterpretation. It questions our modes of collecting, storing and sharing the knowledge we produce. The Archive as a fabricator of disassociation and timelessness, calls us to interrogate our notions of the “here” and the “now”, finding new ways to return our resonant histories to our present moment and engaging the continuities which reveal themselves.
R6 000.00 upfront or R680.56 over 12 months
Flowers from the River, 2024
Chiffon covered mattress
126 x 45 x 7.5 cm framed
30 x 21 x 7 cm unframed
R3 850.00 upfront or R459.48 over 12 months
Brickmaker, 2024
Welded steel
ditshwantsho, dipalo, digopotso juxtaposes the dysfunctional Alex Heritage Community Centre (as a symbol of institutional power and empty gestures) with the Jukskei River (as a symbol of collective redemption). Through interactions with these Sites, Namise foregrounds the necessity of returning to historical moments by recognising, making, carrying and sharing knowledge, to reflect the flourishing of bodies through history. Thinking through the complexities of desire, neglect, and the persistence to belong, her onsite interventions serve as a vehicle of release for the repressed frustrations with the failures of the State. Live engagements, through gestures that offer ways of inhabiting the past through re-collecting and reminding, will take place in three parts.
Ways of Remembering: A lecture performance
When I was thirsty my tongue tasted dust: A streaming from the Jukskei River
Speaking Truth to Power: A screening, reading and offering
Throughout the run of the exhibition-in-progress, visitors to the Open Studio (Monday – Friday, 10:00 – 15:00), may find the artist at work in the gallery, collaborating with images, readings, reminders, and preparing offerings. ditshwantsho, dipalo, digopotso articulates a participatory, evolving narrative – situated outside of formalised holders of history and concerned with the autonomous practices embodied by the communities of Alexandra.
Moments from an archive I, 2019
Giclee print on Tecco paper
119 x 84 cm framed
EV 1/5
R4 850.00 upfront
R562.30 over 12 months
Moments from an archive II, 2019
Giclee print on Tecco paper
119 x 84 cm framed
EV 1/5
R4 850.00 upfront
R562.30 over 12 months
Moments from an archive III, 2019
Giclee print on Tecco paper
119 x 84 cm framed
EV 1/5
R4 850.00 upfront
R562.30 over 12 months
Moments from an archive IV, 2019
Giclee print on Tecco paper
119 x 84 cm framed
EV 1/5
R4 850.00 upfront
R562.30 over 12 months
Moments from an archive V - XVIII, 2019
Digital print on soft back novel paper
29.7 x 21 cm unframed
Edition Variable of 5
R1 500.00 each upfront or R217.83 each over 12 months
V
VI
VII
Moments from an archive V - XVIII, 2019
Digital print on soft back novel paper
29.7 x 21 cm unframed
Edition Variable of 5
R1 500.00 each upfront or R217.83 each over 12 months
Moments from an archive V - XVIII, 2019
Digital print on soft back novel paper 29.7 x 21 cm unframed
Edition Variable of 5
R1 500.00 each upfront or R217.83 each over 12 months
Moments from an archive V - XVIII, 2019
Digital print on soft back novel paper
29.7 x 21 cm unframed
Edition Variable of 5
R1 500.00 each upfront or R217.83 each over 12 months
XVI
XVII
XVII
Refiloe Namise a Johannesburg-based artist who completed her MFA in Creative Research and Practice (2022) and a BA in Fine Art (2016) at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her work is multi-disciplinary, incorporating image, text, sound, video and performance. Namise grapples with the notions of return, remembering and re-articulation through poetic gestures in which she re-enacts historical moments.
This annual award was initiated in 2010 to celebrate the life and career of Dr David Koloane (b.19382019): internationally respected artist, curator, writer and founding member of the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios. In honour of David Koloane’s contribution to developing the arts industry through his ethos of mentorship and learning through exchange, the David Koloane Award benefits emerging artists who demonstrate passion, dedication, and potential for excellence.
The award is open to emerging, South African-based, contemporary visual artists, aged 21-35 who are not represented by a commercial gallery. Recipients receive an intensive three-month residency at the Bag Factory – including studio space, a modest materials stipend, mentorship from the Bag Factory and established artists – culminating in a solo exhibition of a new body of work in the Bag Factory gallery
The Bag Factory is a non-profit contemporary visual art organisation in Newtown, Johannesburg. With a pioneering 32-year history of providing a supportive infrastructure, we are committed to investing in the long-term development of artists, preparing them to confidently make a significant new step in their professional career. We provide studios to a cross-generational community of Johannesburg based artists; we present exhibitions showcasing new work by emerging artists to the wider public; and we host a prestigious international artist and curator residency programme. We also offer artist and curatorial skills development workshops, our annual Young Womxn Studio Bursary, and the prestigious David Koloane Award and Cassirer Welz Award.
The artistic programme is unique in combining art making with cultural debate and art exhibitions, thereby creating a fertile international environment for experimentation, innovation, and critical dialogue between creatives in South Africa and the rest of the world. We are part of the international Triangle Network.
