i did feel at some point that i deserved some internal peace
it felt like i had gone through so much already in my life
the aim was just to have a peaceful life
my work deals with my own lived experience
growing up in cape town in the 1980s
during the last part of the apartheid era
there's definitely something very meditative about weaving
doing it for a while you get lulled into this alternative state
you start watching yourself do it
you're almost on autopilot
and that's kind of the moment we look for
you know that moment of separation from yourself
there is a tradition in south africa of weaving
a lot of the rope i use is sold as like washing line
they're hopeful really cheap
the bees of course is just the costume jewelry so not expensive things
for a while now i've been looking at these domestic spaces
the community that i grew up in which is a very working class community
the linoleum floor cover was really representative of that community
that's what most people would use in the entire homes
so what we looked at was the pathway that gets created over time
in those domestic spaces depending on how furniture was placed
and how people use that space
i always say that i was almost co-opting their stories
trying to figure out my own story by looking at other people's experiences
the desire line itself is maybe for me a step further
so a desire line is an informal pathway that gets created out in an open field
for instance as people move through
they expose the underlying travel
we use google earth to document desire line that sits between pontievo
which is a cape colored neighborhood where i grew up in
and our neighborhood neighborhood was langer which was a black community
and so these desire lines became evidence that
people do cross over these boundaries that was laid out
they must have been the first people who decided to take this path that others followed
and recently in last year well i realized that
working in an ngo had really informed and enriched my own practice in such a massive way
i wanted to start working with a group of women who just needed some help
and so we approached a refugee center and working with some of the crafters
who would typically sell their products to tourists
and with the absence of any tourists during the pandemic
there was no money for them coming in
we created a workshop where we taught the women how to elevate their products
there's a vibrancy there's always music
there's a lot of dancing
they dance when they're upset
they dance when they're protesting
unfortunately they call me father because they say i pay for food
so that's why they call me five
i grew up in this very difficult environment
there was certainly a lot of conflict within my identity
we ended up being raised by my mom's parents
who were christian and very religious christians
but my grandmother loved islam always
this in-between situation which caused a lot of internal conflict
my father was actually quite abusive physically towards my mom
and unfortunately i witnessed that for the first five years of my life raised in apartheid
here i was classified as cape malay which meant i was like a second class citizen
so not white but at least not black
in my early adulthood i knew that there was a lot i needed to heal and fix
my grandparents were nama from the northern cape
and when we were younger they would take us down to where they grew up
i remember a few times on these trips witnessing the sunil dawns
it was mesmerizing
it was mesmerizing watching their feet kick kick kick
and there's clouds of dust just coming up
so there's something so beautiful about these figures
moving in this cloud as the dust rises
and it's what i referenced at least visually when i made the installation
people feel connected to the ground and in the nearly centers around the earth and the dust
they have a deep love for that land
sufism is the mystical side of islam
there's this constant flow between what's happening internally and externally
whether it's through projecting onto others things that merely comes from within
or whether it's internalizing things that has come from the external
so i kind of set on this journey to heal myself as best i can
sufism really gave me that platform to reset things and start fresh