BOSA - Briefing on Soft Arts artist-in-residence 2024
We are excited to announce that the BOSA - Briefing on Soft Arts residency program will be hosted in Zagreb, Croatia from 06-16 May, as a part of the CIMO X AFRI creative research collaboration.
BOSA - Briefing on Soft Arts is an ongoing research project of the Centre for Research of Fashion and Clothing (CIMO) and is focused on the concept of soft arts and softness in relation to designer and artistic practices. The project takes soft materials (primarily textiles) and soft references and procedures as its focus. CIMO welcomes Siviwe James as our latest artist-in-residence, who will focus on female oral histories in relation to local material cultures and craft practices. Siviwe will also take part in two upcoming CIMO programmes: the Open Salon and a workshop programme titled ‘I’m telling you a story… with a needle and thread’.
The 10-day residency offers immersive opportunities to explore alternate, and softer ways of connecting with fashion and dress stories and storytellers from a different part of the world and will contribute to (k)new ways of sharing practices and knowledges. During the residency, researcher and podcast producer Siviwe will share in listening practices with material stories and the cultural and feminist nuances of archival practices of everyday histories. How can a South-facing creative praxis be nurtured in relation to material outputs that deal in everyday knowledges, and how can these shared explorations offer new perspectives and threads for CIMO and AFRI.
@afri_digital@00.sj00
#bosa #softarts #textileart #softness
It's the final days of the biennale.
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Truth, Reconciliation and Commission X AFROPRESENT, 2021.
Video, 7:13 min.
Truth, Reconciliation and Commission X AFROPRESENT is a short film montage that presents compassionate listening as an act of witnessing and transformation. The work shows that facing the violent nature of South Africa’s history can lead to restorative actions of encountering truth as it enables 'rethink our present as a site of connection and revival.' Dressed bodies and fashion become evidence, historical traces of silencing imposed by the coloniser but also a way of resisting through (re)insertion and resurrection.
Showing at the State of Fashion Biennale 2022 | Ways of Caring which has been running from 3 June – 10 July 2022.
Visit the Fashion as Encounters exhibition Co-curated by NOT_____ENOUGH collective to view the commissioned solo work.
@stateoffashionnl@not_enough_collective@afri_digital
Visual Credits:
DOUBLE THINK SS21 By Thebe Magugu (2021)
Presented at Pitti Uomo
Installation creative direction by RAW MATERIALS collective (Consisting of Ib Kamara, Gareth Wrighton, Felix Paradza, assisted by Joe Bates)
Home Affairs SS22 by Wanda Lephoto (2021)
Presented at Lagos Fashion Week
Photography and Video by Aart Verrips
Styling and set design by Chloe Andrea Welgemoed
Video Editing by Jacob Claassens
Brenda Fassie: Not a Bad Girl Documentary by Chris Austin (1997)
Production BBC Television
Truth & Reconciliation Commission documentary
YoYo Films sourced from YouTube
ANC Nation Conference 1991
Audio Credits:
The Mystery of Violence by Syntalk
Posted 25 July 2015
#archivist #black #female #stories #african #narratives of the forgotten
#remember imvelaphi
Can violence be regenerative? #fashion #work #video #film #southafrica #transformation #rethinking #history #decolonial #archivist #postapartheid #narratives #remembering #arnhem #netherlands #stateoffashion #exercising #compassion #waysofcaring #Afropresent #futures #TRC #TruthAndReconcilliationCommission #education #films
Imiphindo kwaXhosa is now published as part of By Way of the Fold: Routes to (K)new Knowledges in Fashion Theory.
Developed as a sonic research practice, the work explores listening, refusal, and relation as ways of engaging knowledge beyond extraction or translation.
This publication holds the work in another form, but it remains grounded in the conditions that shaped it.
With @afri_digital
Co-authors @ericadegreef and souvenirs_of_conflict
A special thank you to the community of Willowvale, the Willowvale Arts Center, under the guidance and support of @lukhanyo_muluse and @azola_krweqe .
And to my friends and thinking partners who have continually encouraged me to push at this work.
To @tomciholland and the wider team, thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this platform.
Read further via the link in bio.
With insight from South Africa 🇿🇦
Welcome to “CRAFTED” Digital at Woven Threads VII
Meet Siviwe James (@00.sj0090 ), presenting Vernacular Vocabularies of Sustainability
A reflection on sustainability as a lived, everyday practice rooted in domestic life. Through acts of keeping, repairing, reusing, and passing things on, the work draws attention to forms of knowledge held within the home. Objects such as the sewing box, the kist, and the reused container are positioned as archives, carrying memory, continuity, and cultural meaning across generations.
This is a glimpse into the full presentation.
Watch the full digital presentation on our YouTube page.
Click on the link in bio to watch! ✨✨✨
De-confining: the Listening Laboratory with UKUBUYISWA
“Ukukhapha precedes ukubuyisa.”
Rather than presenting finished conclusions, we are opening the project early by inviting colleagues, collaborators, and practitioners into a live thinking space where the methods, ethics, and questions of the work can be tested, challenged, and refined together.
This first exchange introduces Ukubuyiswa’s research as it begins unfolding through collaboration with the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb, engaging histories embedded in collections gathered during 19th-century expeditions and later entangled in the political imaginaries of the Non-Aligned era.
The conversation will gather artists, researchers, curators, and collaborators connected to the project in a dialogue on:
– what ethical repair looks like in practice
– where restitution processes fail relationally
– how institutions remain accountable over time
– what kinds of slowness, refusal, or opacity might this work require
In this room, the audience becomes part of the thinking body.
🗓 25 March 2026
⏰ 12:00–13:00 CET
📍 Zoom (link in bio)
Meeting ID: 813 0225 1103
Passcode: 579627
We look forward to opening the conversation.
#Ukubuyiswa #CodeOfRepair #Restitution #MuseumEthics #AfricaEuropeDialogue
Deconfining: the Listening Laboratory with UKUBUYISWA
On 25 March, we open the first public-facing conversation of the project through the deconfining coffee chats network; an informal gathering of practitioners working across art, culture, and heritage in Africa and Europe.
Structured as a Listening Laboratory — Ukubuyiswa’s lead researchers, Siviwe James and Michaela Limberis, alongside project partners and co-researchers, will unpack and share approaches towards restitution not only as a legal or logistical act, but as a relational practice.
Anchored in Xhosa epistemologies and guided by a developing Code of Repair, the project asks how museums might move beyond being repositories of objects to become spaces of relational return, accountability, and living memory.
In this room, the audience becomes part of the thinking body.
Join us:
🗓 25 March 2026
⏰ 12:00–13:00 CET/13:00-14:00 SAST
📍 Zoom
Meeting ID: 813 0225 1103
Passcode: 579627
We look forward to opening the conversation.
#Ukubuyiswa #CodeOfRepair #Restitution #MuseumEthics #decolonialpractice
2026 hit our family with some hard news.
We had to gather around one part of our unit as we tended to a young man’s final rest.
Skunjulwe Ngumla.
A beautiful boy who didn’t get to enjoy his life due to illness. A short life but a life filled with love and care, with devotion and time. You were a reminder of compassion that surpasses all hurt, all disappointment.
You will be missed mtasekhaya. Uthandiwe ngabantu bakho.
Uphumle Gcwanini.
Umphefumlo wakho uhleli noYehova.
Bakukhape ooSbewu side sibonane.
🕯️🕊️
