Kamogelo Walaza

Lived Languages

Memory and identity are at the centre of my installation and performance that explore the problems and possibilities experienced by a black middle-class woman migrating between different cities for employment. Are we aware of – and do we acknowledge – how consistently the past infiltrates our present moment? Bound to a forward momentum, in the installation and performance we are faced with the material realities of a black middle-class woman moving towards upward mobility: from the monumental (film and photography), to the everyday (scraps and receipts found in pockets), to the intimate (letters and diaries). How do we reconcile our living speed with the bygone symbols that surround us? In each layer of this installation and performance, memories of black middle-class identity, in constant upward mobility, emerge. The act of image-making facilitates both remembering and forgetting, both enhancing and obscuring the content of memory. No single object here is monolithic: the performance assaults the mind, details magnifying and then dissolving into the ether.

The impact of the performance and installation is instrumental in threading together the image of this body of work: each component prompts the viewer to consider the featured works as metaphors of our intuition. As human beings, we consistently rework and reimagine ourselves during our lives as people with sociopolitical issues; in this instance through the eyes of a black middle-class woman’s identity as a migrant.

Performance, 2022

Dramaturgy: Wezile Harmans