Associação Cultural Videobrasil

The south african artist talks about his works Desolation I-V e Of Nationhood, exhibited in the 20th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil. In Desolation I-V, five videos retrieve images of police violence in popular revolts in South Africa’s recent history: the student uprising in Soweto in 1976; the miners’ strike in Marikana, 2012; and the protests of the #RhodesMustFall campaign in 2015. In the video Of Nationhood, a living human body explores a monument both imposing and pretentious, yet abandoned. Built in the 1980s, the Ntaba ka Ndoda celebrates the heroic past of Ciskei, a country created and dissolved in the attempt to adjust peoples, territories, and traditions to South Africa’s current political division. The artist states: “"What have we learned from our past, if history keeps repeating itself today?”