Dineo Seshee Bopape: ‘Is I Am Sky’
Dineo Seshee Bopape, Is I Am Sky, 2023. Video (colour, sound), 17 min 48 sec. Courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery Beirut/Hamburg
About the Work
Bopape’s work explores her relationship to both land and cosmos, as well as wider histories of oppression. The artist explains: ‘I was trying to find a way of marrying the sky, to merge with the space that nothing occupies.’ Filmed near San Francisco in 2011, the work’s title refers to a 1972 poem by jazz musician Sun Ra (1934–1993), ‘The Endless Realm’. It begins: ‘I have nothing. Nothing! How really is I am…’ Bopape’s work echoes Sun Ra’s celebration of cosmic infinity as a frontier for Black liberation. During the video’s making, former African National Congress (ANC) Youth League President Julius Malema was put on trial in South Africa. A prominent activist, he was convicted of hate speech after singing a contentious lyric from an anti-apartheid song. In response, Bopape can be heard singing the African Cream Freedom Choir’s Hamba Kahle Mkhonto, a song often chanted at the funerals of those killed during the apartheid years.
About the Artist
Dineo Seshee Bopape (b. 1981; based in Johannesburg, South Africa) spent her youth in Limpopo in varying social situations. At 12, she moved to Durban where she studied painting and sculpture at Durban Institute of Technology. She is a 2007 graduate of De Ateliers in Amsterdam and in 2010 completed an MFA at Columbia University, New York. She was a co-winner of the Artes Mundi 9 Prize in 2021 and the main winner of the Future Generation Art Prize 2017 by PinchukArtCentre. She has shown her work internationally in numerous solo exhibitions – most recently at Kiasma Museum, Helsinki (2024); Migros Museum, Zurich (2024); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2022); Ocean Space, Venice (2022); and Secession, Vienna (2022).
About EMAP x FRIEZE FILM SEOUL
For the third year in a row, Frieze Film returns to Frieze Seoul 2024. This year’s programme is presented in partnership with Ewha Media Art Presentation (EMAP) and on view from 2 – 6 September at Ewha Womans University and online at frieze.com.
Curated by Joowon Park and Valentine Umansky, this year’s programme is titled ‘All that Weaves the Universe: Of Quantum Entanglements’. It brings together time-based media works of 37 international artists, unfolding under 8 chapters.
