b. 1981

Dineo Seshee Bopape was born in the year of the golden rooster, 1981 (1974 in the Ethiopian calendar), on a Sunday. If she were Ghanaian, her name would be akosua/akos for short. During the same year of her birth, there were perhaps 22 recorded Atlantic Ocean hurricanes and 4 Indian Ocean cyclones close to Mozambique. The Brixton riots took place; the song endless love is popular on the airwaves; Umkhonto We Sizwe performs numerous underground assaults against the apartheid state. The Boeing 767 makes its first air flight; Zaire is the premier producer of the world’s cobalt; Winnie Mandela’s banishment orders are renewed for another 5 years. In Chile, the Water Code is established, separating water ownership from land ownership; two people were injured when a bomb exploded in a Durban shopping centre; Bobby Sands dies. There was an earthquake that killed maybe 50 people in China; an International NGO Conference on Indigenous Populations and the Land is held in Geneva; the name 'internet' is mentioned for the first time; there is a coup d’etat in Ghana; princess Diana of Britain marries Charles; Bob Marley dies; an annular solar eclipse is visible in the Pacific Ocean. Apartheid SA invades Angola; AIDS is identified/created/named; Isabelle Allende begins to write 'The house of the spirits'; Greece is struck by three earthquakes over a period of 11 days; the Slave trade is officially abolished in Mauritania; the remains of the Titanic are found; Muhammad Ali retires; USA and Japan are in the leading position in the seabed-mining industry; the 15th IVF baby is born; Thomas Sankara rides a bike to his first cabinet meeting; Machu Picchu is declared a heritage site; a series of apparitions of The Virgin Mary commence to a group of school girls in Rwanda; also similarly, in Yugoslavia. New Zealand recognised 16 rivers and lakes as 'outstanding' and protected them in perpetuity. Her paternal grandmother dies affected by dementia; MTV is launched; it is said that right whales born in that year, are taller than right whales born since. Other concurrent events of the year of her birth, and of her lifetime, are perhaps too many to fully know. Some things continued, some transformed, some shifted, others ended(?), some began… The world’s human population was then apparently at around 4.529 billion... today she (Bopape) is one amongst 7 billion - occupying multiple adjectives.

Dineo Seshee Bopape’s artistic process engages with the matter of self-sovereignty, 'exploring the metaphysics of "self-presence" (the sense of being present to one’s self) and matter (in the literal, alchemical and symbolic sense) often surveying the wounds of the personal and collective body; this at times through the historical contexts backdrop of colonialisms, imperialism, and slavery.' Informed by Afro-diasporic spiritual aesthetics, she interweaves these themes through her large-scale, immersive installations that often encompass storytelling, sculpture, drawing, video, and sound.

For further information about these artists please click here.