Thero Makepe’s work deals with memory, transnational identity, and his own family archive as fluid entities that depend on one another. In We Didn’t Choose to be Born Here, the artist examines his family’s experiences in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and Botswana by undertaking re-enactments with his own relatives. Makepe’s restaged narrative follows the biographies of his grandfather Hippolytus Mothopeng who was forced into exile in Botswana, and his uncle Zephaniah Mothopeng, who was an underground activist in the second half of the twentieth century and cofounder of the Pan Africanist Congress, the South African liberation movement. Taking these sociopolitical tensions as a starting point, Makepe’s camera retroactively examines the events of Operation Plecksy, an illegal cross-border attack by South African military forces that took place over forty years ago on 14 July 1985 in Gaborone and led to the deaths of up to twelve South African emigrants. The victims included members of the Medu Art Ensemble (1979 – 85), a collective of politically engaged artists and scholars that South Africa’s apartheid government designated a ‘terrorist’ organisation on the basis of its involvement in the pan-African resistance struggle. Makepe’s collaborative visualisation and his use of media to blend the past with the present day transform this historic turning point in Botswana’s history into a space for images of resilience that situates subaltern perspectives between documentation and memory.
Website:
Thero Makepe’s work deals with memory, transnational identity, and his own family archive as fluid entities that depend on one another. In We Didn’t Choose to be Born Here, the artist examines his family’s experiences in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and Botswana by undertaking re-enactments with his own relatives. Makepe’s restaged narrative follows the biographies of his grandfather Hippolytus Mothopeng who was forced into exile in Botswana, and his uncle Zephaniah Mothopeng, who was an underground activist in the second half of the twentieth century and cofounder of the Pan Africanist Congress, the South African liberation movement. Taking these sociopolitical tensions as a starting point, Makepe’s camera retroactively examines the events of Operation Plecksy, an illegal cross-border attack by South African military forces that took place over forty years ago on 14 July 1985 in Gaborone and led to the deaths of up to twelve South African emigrants. The victims included members of the Medu Art Ensemble (1979 – 85), a collective of politically engaged artists and scholars that South Africa’s apartheid government designated a ‘terrorist’ organisation on the basis of its involvement in the pan-African resistance struggle. Makepe’s collaborative visualisation and his use of media to blend the past with the present day transform this historic turning point in Botswana’s history into a space for images of resilience that situates subaltern perspectives between documentation and memory.
Website:
contact
office@fotodoks.de
Festival address
Architekturgalerie München
Blumenstr. 22
80331 München
The exhibition has finished and is now closed.
contact
office@fotodoks.de
Festival address
Architekturgalerie München
Blumenstr. 22
80331 München
The exhibition has finished and is now closed.