Art to the Streets of East London

Lerato Shadi, Makhuba, performance/installation, 2014. Photo by Erik Dettwiler

Over the years artists have been invited to ‘speak to the street’ and following a 2013 ROSL Visual Arts residency at Hospitalfield Arts, artist Lerato Shadi presents Makhuba, a new work to be created over six days from 9 – 16 December. Thereafter it will remain as a trace of her daily actions.Lerato Shadi uses her own body to investigate ‘the politics of transformation, or transition, from absence to presence, subject to object, inclusion, exclusion and vice versa‘. Makhuba is a companion piece to a work performed in Berlin and Johannesburg in 2012, Seipone, where she wrote about her past, and on alternate days she created and erased words. Her new work will focus on the future. She will conjure a future for herself connected to society, placing herself in the world. She will again write and erase.

Performance for this artist is a journey for herself as much as for those watching. Lerato Shadi explores assumptions about the (black) female body and how performance creates a stage to make the body both visible and invisible. Using time, repetitive actions as well as stillness, she questions ‘How does one create oneself?’. Seipone, meaning mirror in Tswana, reflected on whether you can lose your past and who is in charge of one’s own history. Makhuba, translated as ‘to wave/paddle’, will question whether one can project a different future for oneself, and how in our imaginations we all live very different lives.

Shadi will undertake a performance in Rivington Place’s large window (on Rivington Street). She will write and erase on alternate days over six days from 9 until 16 December, and thereafter her actions will remain as a trace until 4 January 2015.

Live: 9-16 December 2014