The-Stronger-We-Become-Catalogue

Enshrined
The installation and shrine +/- 1791 (monument to the Haitian Revolution 1791)
(2017) signals Dineo Seshee Bopape’s interest in monumentalisation and
traversing space and time through commemoration. Conceptualised in her
use of the shrine is a connection to Afro-Diasporic spiritual practices and their
relationship with spiritual events that have motivated revolutions. +/- 1791
(monument to the Haitian Revolution 1791), as the title suggests, is a contemplation
on the spiritually-based performances about the Haitian Revolution. Bopape is
drawn to the narrative of Cécile Fatiman, a voodoo priestess who presided over a
ceremony where the Haitian revolution was prophesised. She is fascinated by the
idea of a spiritual gathering conjuring up a political occurrence and the sizeable
effects that spirituality could have on the structure of society. This ceremony
resulted in what would be the first successful anti-slavery revolution. In the
installation, constellations of carefully assembled objects are subliminally placed in,
on and around clay and concrete brick formations. The clay bricks are themselves
well-conceptualised objects that sometimes include soil from different regions, cow
dung, and ash. These materials are later compressed and pounded together into
different sized rectangular shapes. There are remnants of healing herbs that are
indigenous to the United Arab Emirates, the site where the work was installed in
2017.
Other objects and materials include cowry shells, soil from Palestine, South Africa
(Marikana) and the Congo, which are all sites of conflict that are marked with the
residue of violence. Scattered around the work are plastic bottles of varying sizes,
some filled with rose water and sea water, the majority filled with fuel and covered
in red and white cloth. These bottles, on initial inspection, resemble petrol bombs
that could be used in acts of conflict or of resistance.
+/- 1791 (monument to the Haitian Revolution 1791) comprises four architectural
structures, and the seemingly unoccupied spaces in between them. It is these
‘unoccupied’ spaces, this void, this nothingness, that is of particular interest to me
and is self-proclaimed by Bopape. Her 2013 video, is I am sky, is a contemplation –
with and through Sun Ra’s An Endless Realm – into the idea of being nothing, or
having nothing, and being in nothing. As such, my contemplation into the idea of (re)
presenting nothingness is rooted in long-standing queries that Bopape has herself
returned to.
I want to speculatively contemplate what it would mean to represent nothingness,
and what shape nothingness, a void, and an absence, would or could take. I am
intrigued by the idea of enshrinement as it relates to presence and non-presence,
being and nothingness. As such, I want to begin with a set of assumptions about
shrines, specifically the idea of commemorating something that used to exist, but is
no longer here or there. While enshrinement is not only for things that have passed,
perished or have died – such as a shrine to an ancestor – this essay presupposes
an enshrinement of things that were there, and are no longer there, things that
existed and now cease to exist. With that in mind, an enshrinement of or to
nothingness assists us in putting pressure on preconceived conceptions that are
rooted in chronological temporality. In other words, what happens when we
consider enshrinement outside of the capture of chronology in the sense of
something existing, undergoing a death, not existing, and then being
commemorated in its absence. What happens when we conceive of enshrinement
as existing outside of time, and outside of place and materiality? What also happens
when we consider an enshrinement to nothingness that is represented by, through
and as nothingness?
I am enchanted by the performance of reading the voids in Bopape’s installations
through Tina Campt’s 1 notion of the low frequencies emitted in the everyday lived
experiences of black people, and the idea that there is merit in paying attention to
the inaudible, seemingly absent frequencies that are at the centre of black life. The
frequencies that Campt speaks of are the sonic frequencies of black quotidian life.
These are apparently inaudible moments that are not heard through listening, but
rather activate other sensorial responses. It is the “infra-sonic frequencies” that are
not audible to the human ear, but are felt, oftentimes as vibrations². Departing from
Campt, we are compelled to imagine what happens when we listen closely to the
emptiness or empty spaces in and around Bopape’s shrines, and, more specifically,
what happens when we look carefully at nothing. Bopape makes us contemplate
what becomes revealed to us when we stare into nothingness. More significantly,
what happens when we consider the ways in which Bopape has represented that
nothingness and how we engage with that representation?
1 Campt, Listening to Images.
2 Campt, 58
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