Dineo Seshee Bopape

Dineo Seshee Bopape was born in 1981 in Polokwane, South Africa.  She graduated with a B Tech from the Durban Institute of Technology in 2004.  She had a two year residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam (2005-2007), and she is currently studying for her Master's degree in Fine Arts at Columbia University, New York.

Dineo Bopape was selected for the exhibition Younger Than Jesus, the first edition of The Generational, a new triennial at the New Museum, New York, 2009.  Other recent shows include Rebelle: Art And Feminism 1969-2009 at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, Arnhem, 2009.  She was the winner of the 2008 MTN New Contemporaries Award, South Africa.  She has held solo shows at the KZNSA Gallery, Durban (2008 and 2005), and at Mart House Gallery, Amsterdam (2007).  Recent group exhibitions include In Transition: Russia 2008 at the National Centre of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2008); ZA young art from South Africa at Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena (2008); Cape '07, Cape Town (2007).

Dineo Seshee Bopape is an artist who is interested in the collection of material and their potential to invoke strong emotional reactions. The resulting considered, abject messiness provides the viewer entry into the netherworld of the unsaid and unspoken. Secrets, white lies and elements of psychosexual ambivalence are components on the artist’s palette, stirred and applied with vigor to create a site for contemplation.

"My work is a search through a minefield of metaphors in spaces...spaces of memory and of the present, spaces of the real and the imagined, the hidden and revealed. It is an attempt to conceal and mask, whilst simultaneously attempting to peel away the husk and layers that crust over secretive stories embedded in objects and in people”.