Dineo Seshee Bopape

Dineo Seshee Bopape (b. 1981 in Polokwane, South Africa) lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. Bopape spent her youth in Limpopo in varying social situations. At 12, she began to follow a hunger for an elsewhere, beginning with Durban where she spent some years and 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, the main prize winner of the Future Generation Art Prize 2017 by PinchukArtCentre, the recipient of a 2010 Columbia University Toby Fund Award, and the winner of 2008 MTN New Contemporaries Award. Read more

She has shown her work internationally in numerous solo exhibitions – most recently at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; Ocean Space, Venice and Secession, Vienna (2022); Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (2021); Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, and Darling Foundry, Montreal (2017); Art in General, New York, and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016); Hordeland Kunst Sentrum, Bergen, and Hayward Gallery Project Space, London (2015); as well as group shows including the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection (2023); the 23rd Biennale of Sydney (2022); Prospect New Orleans (2021); Busan Biennale (2020); Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2018); Sharjah Biennale (2017); Marrakech Biennale, Bienal de São Paulo, Montreal Biennale, and SeMA – Media City Seoul (2016); and Biennale de Lyon, (2013). She co-represented South-Africa at the Venice Biennial in 2019.

Dineo Seshee Bopape was born in the year of the golden rooster, 1981(1974 in the Ethiopian calendar), on a Sunday. If she were Ghanaian, her name would be akosua/akos for short. During the same year of her birth, there were perhaps 22 recorded Atlantic Ocean hurricanes and 4 Indian Ocean cyclones close to Mozambique. The Brixton riots took place; the song “endless love” is popular on the airwaves; Umkhonto We Sizwe performs numerous underground assaults against the apartheid state. the Boeing 767 makes its first air flight, Zaire is the premier producer of the world’s cobalt, Winnie Mandela’s banishment orders are renewed for another 5 years; In Chile, the Water Code is established, separating water ownership from land ownership; two people were injured when a bomb exploded in a Durban shopping center; Bobby Sands dies; There was an earthquake that killed maybe 50 people in China; an International NGO Conference on Indigenous Populations and the Land is held in Geneva, The name “internet” is mentioned for the first time; there is a coup d’etat in Ghana; princess Diana of Britain marries Charles; Bob Marley dies; an annular solar eclipse is visible in the Pacific Ocean. apartheid SA invades Angola; AIDS is identified/ created/named; Salman Rushdie releases his book “Midnight’s Children” ; Greece is struck by three earthquakes over a period of 11 days; the Slave trade is officially abolished in Mauritania; the remains of the Titanic are found; Muhammad Ali retires; USA and Japan are in the leading position in the seabed-mining industry, the 15th IVF baby is born, Thomas Sankara rides a bike to his first cabinet meeting; Machu Picchu is declared a heritage site; a series of apparitions of The VirginMary commence to a group of school girls in Rwanda, also similarly, in Yugoslavia. New Zealand recognized 16 rivers and lakes as “Outstanding” and protected them in perpetuity. her paternal grandmother dies affected by dementia; MTV is launched; It is said that right whales born in that year, are taller than right whales born since. Other concurrent events of the year of her birth, and of her lifetime, are perhaps too many to fully know; Some things continued, some transformed, some shifted, others ended(?) some began… The world’s human population was then apparently at around 4.529 billion... today she (Bopape) is one amongst 7 billion - occupying multiple adjectives.

1/6Dineo Seshee Bopape, *Untitled (Of Occult Instability) [Feelings]*, 2016–18, installation view, 10. Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

2/6Dineo Seshee Bopape, *The Stronger We Become*, 2019, installation view, The South African Pavillion, 58th Venice Biennial.

3/6Dineo Seshee Bopape, *Mabu mubu, mnu,* 2017, mixed media site-specific installation produced by the Pinchuk Art Center, moulded and compressed soil structures created from locally sourced soils, feathers, bees wax clay pieces moulded by a clenched fist, 18 carat gold leaf, loose soil, healing herbs

Lerato le le golo (...la go hloka bo kantle), 2022, Branch with blue ribbon, neon light, rock, clay lid with herbs, 3 soaps (dinosaur, crocodile, turtle), 4 soil cubes, 4 circles made of branches, herbs, clay bowl, dimensions variable — 4/6Dineo Seshee Bopape, *Lerato le le golo (...la go hloka bo kantle)*, 2022, Branch with blue ribbon, neon light, rock, clay lid with herbs, 3 soaps (dinosaur, crocodile, turtle), 4 soil cubes, 4 circles made of branches, herbs, clay bowl, dimensions variable

5/6Dineo Seshee Bopape, *lerato laka le a phela le a phela le a phela / my love is alive, is alive, isalive,* 2022, three channel HD video (color, 12-channel sound), 16' 25''

(Ka) pheko ye... (Kgoro 1), 2023, clay, reflective matt, tin foil, paper, stones, flowers (clay), candle, stickers, photo print, wire, feather, charcoal — 6/6Dineo Seshee Bopape, *(Ka) pheko ye... (Kgoro 1)*, 2023, clay, reflective matt, tin foil, paper, stones, flowers (clay), candle, stickers, photo print, wire, feather, charcoal

Selected Press

Gallery Exhibitions

Dineo Seshee Bopape
Lerole: footnotes (The struggle of memory against forgetting)

8 November, 2018 – 19 January, 2019
Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg

Exhibitions Beyond

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2024

(ka) pheko ye – Wo der Traum beginnt, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland

2023

Projects: Dineo Seshee Bopape, The Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Lobby, MoMA, New York, USA
(ka) pheko ye – the dream to come, Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA, Helsinki, Finland

2022

Born in the first light of the morning [moswara’marapo], Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, Italy
The Soul Expanding Ocean #3, Ocean Space, Venice, Italy
Lerato le le golo (...la go hloka bo kantle), secession Vienna, Austria

2020

New, Site-Responsive Commissions, The Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA at VCU), Richmond, Virginia, USA

2019

Dineo Seshee Bopape: Sedibeng, it comes with the rain, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, United Kingdom

2018

When Spirituality was a Baby, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
Lerole: footnotes. (The struggle of memory against forgetting), Sfeir-Semler Gallery Hamburg, Germany
Solo Exhibition: Main Prize winner of the Future Generation Art Prize 2017, PinchukArtCentre Kiev, Ukraine

2017

Lerole: footnotes (The struggle of memory against forgetting), Witte de With Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands
sa kosa ke lerole, The Gallery in the Round, National Arts Festival Grahamstown, Grahamstown, South Africa
and- in. the light of this. _____, Darling Foundry, Montreal, Canada
222, PHURULLOGA, Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany

2016

sa ______ ke lerole, (sa lerole ke ___ ), Art in General, New York, USA
Untitled [of occult instability] (feelings) Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France

2015

Slow-co-ruption, Hayward Gallery Project space, London, United Kingdom
we need the memories of all our members, Hordeland Kunst Sentrum, Bergen, Norway

2014

This is What You Will Look Like When You Die/After Ana Mandieta, August House, Johannesburg, South Africa

2013

Kgoro ya go tswa: even if you fall from a circle, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2011

lesobana!! lesobana! lesobana!! (le bulegile); lesobana! lesobana! lesobana!! (go phunyegile), Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2010

Long Live the Immaterial...Effect no.55, Mart House Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
the eclipse will not be visible to the naked eye, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
I like to remember things my own way, Annarumma 404, Napoli, Italy
ANTRHOPHOBIA installation at ABC art Fair in Berlin, Berlin, Germany

2009

You Horrible Horrible Bitch!, Mart House Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands Solo Project ARCO-Art Fair, represented by Mart House Gallery, Madrid, Spain, curated by Susanne Neubauer

2008

Love Strung, KZNSA Gallery, Durban, South Africa
It’s a Celebration Bitches!!!, Thami Mnyele Studio, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Non in Mind (fictions unending) dream weaver and other stories, Rotterdam Art Fair – represented by Mart House Gallery, Rotterdam, Netherlands

2007

Non in Mind (fictions unending) dreamweaver and other stories, Mart House Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2005

Keep it to Yourself, KZNSA Gallery, Durban, South Africa

Selected Group Exhibitions

2026

If the word we, 59th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA (forthcoming)
Concrete Affection | Carte Blanche, The International Festival of Films on Art (Le FIFA), Montreal, Canada
In Interludes and Transitions, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, JAX District, Diriyah, Saudi Arabia

2025

For the Time Being, Kochi-Muziris Biennale
The Shade, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Karantina, Beirut, Lebanon