Moving with those who came before us, those beside us and those within us. This series subconsciously translates the sonic circularity I found in Solangeās āWhen I Get Homeā into a visual circularity. The album loops with tracks bleeding into each other and repetition of lyrics in tracks forming a type of manifestation. These qualities became the language for how I see the images unfolding and the ballerinas gently introducing multiple versions of themselves across time. The constant repetition of circles mimicking CDs becomes a model of time, movement and music that holds space for return. How movement circles back to itself, how a body can be both beginning and end, how we carry each other with tenderness through timelines. The montages have been composed over months like an album. Each image holding what came before while opening what comes next, the past and future collapsing into this vulnerable present.
Forever thankful for my friends, my dear BALLERINAS for time travelling with me and expanding Setshaba se mpusetsa ko nna ā further.
Montages on glossy paper
29.9 x 100 cm
2025
SetŔhaba se mpusetsa go nna
Performance Video (4:10, b/w)
2025
(This is a snippet)
A feeling. A pulse. A loop.
A quiet instruction to return.
Self is not singular. It emerges, stretches, and shifts through time, memory, sound, and the presence of others. We do not perform alone. We move with those who came before us, those beside us, and those within us.
I choose the ballerinas because they remind me of elements of myself simply by being who they are. They are my friends, my collaborators, my community. Each of them brings a language that is unscripted. They are layered people living in bodies that are constantly read, projected onto, and hypervisibilised. But here, in this video, they reintroduce themselves. I was thinking of spaces like runways and stages through the way enter and move. In the introduction, reintroduction which ever way it is not a clear or singular self, but a loop. A re-arrival. A refusal to be fixed but rather in flux. They hold their own timelines, and in doing so, they help bring me back to mine.
The video loops. , it begins at what feels like an end and folds backward, . Time does not move forward here. It bends. It blurs. Deeeply deeply inspired by Solangeās When I Get Home this is my interpretation of a visual palindrome .
Ballerinaās:
Odwa Sithunzela
Lelami Ngoqo
Keabetse Maake
Jemiye Ugwujide
Vocals:
Khalysa
Pianist:
Lebohang Lebakeng
Assistant:
Khetho Mkhalaphi
Black Ballerinas I
2025
In its many (ongoing) versions . This a montage that I started composing from early March/ April. I have been exploring the idea of circles, cdās , ācircles circles ellipses ā. I have a great appreciation for albums with elements of sonic palindrome. A new word I recently learned but canāt wait to talk more about it as I talk about my process. Sonic palindrome albums (for me atleast) start introducing techniques like pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding etc. Which leads me to questions of timeā¦
A few months ago, I took a trip on my birthday and encountered the most luminous versions of myself. The joy felt infinite. I thought, if travel can do this, I must go again. So I did. But this time, I came face to face with the shadows. The selves Iād buried, denied, forgotten.
This project has worn many names: Self-Interrogation, Ke Gona. While I thought this would be final this is also process. Hmmm how do I describe this new medium of movement Iāve found? Well maybe it came back to me because it probably died when I was 5 and my elders told me I could not dancešāš½ Or maybe this is an ode to movement in my room, all alone with no desire of rhythm or coherence. Nothing just expression.
The kind that spills from the body when language canāt hold the truth.
Itās become a dialogue between my many selves. An unfolding. A remembering.
Iām still trying to name what this is.
But if thereās one thing Iāve come to believe, itās this:
āI canāt be a singular version of myself. There are too manyā¦ā
Guitarist: Khalysa
