Inheritance will always call us to remember ourselves and where we came from. No matter how much we run from it or pretend it does not exist, it will always show up in ways we least expect or ignite a fire in us that we cannot ignore.
In her upcoming solo exhibition, So Quick the Crocodile Has Eaten the Sun, Boemo Diale is thinking about the things inherited from her family, particularly through maternal structures and the women who raised her.
The work has turned inward.
The title comes from Tswana cosmology and the teachings Diale received on how people perceived the world before colonisation.
However, she also makes mention of Taoist cosmology, which is a way in which the Chinese traditionally understood the world.
In a paper published by The Art Institute of Chicago, “Taoists believe that when the world began, there was only the Tao, a featureless, empty void pregnant with the potential of all things”.
In her work, the world becomes expectant. An energy preserved in a void and time.
“I’ve been very inspired by Tswana cosmologies and looking at how people interpreted the world before colonisation — more sort of indigenous practices and cosmologies.
“Also looking a lot at Taoist cosmologies, which are Asian perspectives on the world in the beginning of time and how time passes, seasons work and the stars influence us,” Diale says.
“The passage of time and thinking about memory and inheritance of things that I’ve inherited from my family and my upbringing.
Sort of playing with that and looking at maternal structures. In a lot of
cosmologies and indigenous practices, the mother and the womb were very sacred.”
Perhaps it is important that we look at Diale’s work as an extended archive of what we have inherited. A knowledge system that holds histories but also gives us a glimpse into what could be, what is possible.
“Archives and history are very important to the work I do because it influenced a lot of my experiences as well.”
For Diale, archiving is not only about preserving objects or documenting a historical moment. It is about understanding how history lives inside people.
“In a broader South African context, I think we all make up one another. So many of my experiences — if I think about them in the times that they happened — there was some sort of political influence of what I was experiencing, as a black girl,” she says.
Politics is a running theme for anyone in the South African context; it makes up a huge part of how we move in society. The personal is inseparable from the political and historical. It is a heavy theme but we cannot hide from politics.
Diale says the running themes for the show are maternal knowledge systems, spiritual inheritance, intimacy in domestic settings, the vessel as the womb, birth of newness, the beginning of time and the world, Taoist cosmology and the beginning of time, childhood and magical toys, elements as tools to navigate life and growth, and Tswana cosmologies.
I am more interested in the womb as a vessel and the birth of newness. To carry anything in your womb, be it life, trauma or energy, can be isolating. It is a mourning period. A lot of the time, when the womb is about to purge, women are told to keep away from people and cover up to keep the womb warm so the transition is not so painful.
That can be a lot to carry.
The same is true for Diale as she is creating worlds in her studio. There is a sense of keeping her womb warm before it releases the world she’s creating, which consists of 11 paintings and seven ceramics.
“Just being in my studio, working on pieces and going through the processes of grieving and shedding and also hopefulness because I don’t know what’s coming next. I feel a lot of hope.
“That’s sort of a theme that I’ve been working with as well; this world of being expectant and looking at it as hope. A lot of us need that right now,” she says.
Diale’s work requires a lot of
reference and research because the work of archiving needs accuracy. It does not belong to us but to generations to come.
Where does she get the knowledge from?
“There’s a lot of reading. I do really enjoy reading, so reading a lot of journals, watching a lot of interviews. But I also do speak to my grandmother and my mom about their own interpretations surrounding my ideas and pushing and pulling with them.”
She says the tug she has with them is important so they get to an idea that is full.
It is also interesting to see how discovering knowledge changes as it moves between different generations.
Diale paints a picture of how moments of downloads come over her in her studio, which connect information and experiences she might have had.
“A lot of things feel like downloads. I will be working in my studio and I have a moment and I realise: ‘Oh, I can actually relate these two things.’
“This thing that I read and this thing that I experienced correlate into this other little idea. Then I can pull a string and look at that idea as something else.”
This is where her idea of world-building becomes particularly significant. Each painting begins with an idea or archetype.
She might decide that one work will explore one aspect of the broader concept, while another will tackle something else.
Only once the works begin to come together does she understand how they speak to one another.
Diale is asking people to probe their histories without feeling trapped in them.
She is asking people to learn about their histories, the people who raised them and their own knowledge systems that are being passed down.
She is also asking them to question and celebrate what they inherit.
“Because my work is quite based on archetypes, there’s a character in every image that someone can relate to in society.
“I really hope that someone will look at an image and be like: ‘Wow! That reminds me of a moment that I had by myself in my room last Monday.’ Or: ‘This reminds me of my mother.’ Or: ‘This reminds me of my grandmother.’”
“I do speak a lot towards the woman experience but even in this aspect of world-building and looking at archives and histories, I hope that people can also look at where they come from and use that to facilitate a new world for themselves.
The process mirrors inheritance. We receive fragments — stories, beliefs, gestures, memories, objects and ways of understanding the world and then spend our lives figuring out what they mean to us.