How do we honour those who came before us? How do we recognise the invented knowledge systems and sacred care of our foremothers?

I grew up between rural Limpopo and the city. I was allowed the privilege to operate between these two spaces. I came to understand a friction here; a fluctuation between an old and new way of being in the world.

Our grandfathers had to travel to work in the city’s gold mines, as our Mothers became the inventors and makers of everything that sustained and grew the community. It is this wisdom, their creation of objects and song, their healing practices and enduring stories, to which my work pays homage.

My Grandmother was a farmer. She farmed her own piece of land and employed local women to help harvest its fruits each season. She paid them in produce that would become the sustenance for their own families. And so a circular economy of energy came into being between the earth, this sisterhood and the community it fed.

Amongst the structures they built was a rounded, roofless space where most of the cooking of meals took place. This form gave shelter from the wind, allowing fires to burn and smoke to escape as the women gathered around the hearth. Cooking was the sole responsibility of the women. Only Sisters, Mothers, and Daughters were privy to this circular place.

My presented work tells this story: it is an evocation, an incantation of my matrilineal binding. It honours the circularity of all things, the sustaining power of our Foremothers – in both this world and the next. Over time, this form will disintegrate, giving way to the earth, but the memory of the work of our Mothers will remain.