The exhibition is comprised of a collection of objects that I have gathered over the course of this project. The objects have been tinkered with, cobbled, and transformed in order to generate new outlooks on function, materiality and studio- based processes. Through these objects and in partnership with them, I am a tinker, a cobbler, and a transformer. Objects have come apart and been reassembled to suggest new modes of use, and in doing so pays homage to the object often ignored and discarded.

Post-colonial Botswana is analysed in this body of work as an anecdote. Its landscapes, history, culture, traditions, norms and identity are deconstructed and reconstituted in a heterotopia of my own making. Motivated by the decline in the momentum and visibility of Botswana's women's movements, the project asks how non-male resistance and self-determination has and can operate in Botswana, particularly in traditional and cultural spaces. In this work, I identify storytelling and folklore as a device that though culturally-specific, is reflected across nations on the continent, and so, allows a meditation on personal and national identity that is not restrictive or isolating as it must occur in constant reference to the culture(s) around it. Through my own works and the works of Thebe Phetogo, Meleko Mokgosi, Athi Patra-Ruga and Kudzanai Chuirai, I discuss the ‘making visual' of oral and folklore culture to highlight the interconnectedness of African narratives and oral storytelling/performing practices while deconstructing Botswana's conceptual basis, which this work sees as being folklore itself.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-75). / In 2010, the Negative Alphabet was devised by an advertising agency as a brainstorming tool for new logos and cartoon mascots. After the Language Saturation Shift of the 2030's, when the traditional alphabet could no longer support the density of meaning packed into each word, these symbols were adopted to allow for a greater range of nuance to be presented within and alongside our positive sentences. (Brian McMullen, 2004:190)

Includes bibliographical references.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-114). / My artwork deals with the experience and concept of 'mystery' - mystery that inspires awe - and sometimes fear - and that is located beyond the known. The sublime is one area where I experience mystery intensely. Immanuel Kant, an important philosopher of the Enlightenment, proposes that one can and should contain the sublime with reason, and in the process elevate it to an objective, universal and rational truth. My response to, and understanding of, the sublime differs from that of Kant: I do not attempt in any way to contain the sublime. In my work, I wish only to express my relationship to it, and to experience it as a personal, intimate and emotional truth.

Includes bibliographical references. / Inflatable sculpture is often seen as absurd, comic or light-hearted, but it can also convey a darker, more serious tone. The inflatable sculptures created in part fulfillment for this degree explore refabrication through the use of discarded plastic. This body of work highlights the relationship between industrialisation, plastic goods and nature. The insubstantial, flimsy qualities of the inflatable are an extended metaphor for the fragility of ecologies and the impact of plastic pollution on the environment.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-119). / In 2008 I travelled, with camera in hand, to Germany in order to photograph the two concentration camps to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück. These are two of several camps that Germany established during the late 1930s to house so called undesirables or those believed to be enemies of the Reich. These people were not only extracted from society within Germany, but later from all occupied territories. European Jewry was the primary target of this policy. Six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, but they were not the only victims. Approximately one and a half million Gypsies, at least 250 000 physically or mentally disabled people, three million Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats, Communists, partisans, trade unionists and Polish intelligentsia were among those that fell victim to the Nazis. The Germany's concentration camps, these prisoners of the Reich were set to work under severe inhumane conditions as slave labour, which was also a means of torture, as efficient production was not the primary endeavour of these camps. It was only when war broke out that policy altered and the labour was utilised by German enterprises and to aid Germany's war effort. These camps formed part of a larger system that later sought to eventually annihilate these "enemies". There were also transit camps to those camps located towards the east, in Poland - the notorious death camps, where mass murder became harrowingly efficient.

ILIZWE LIFILE is a tactile exploration of the aspects of cultural history kwaXhosa within South African political history that intersect with my own lived experience. Through drawings, tableau, sculptures and video, I explore how cultural, social and political narratives within the South African post-apartheid landscape are negotiated. In this explicatory document, divided in three parts, I focus on interrelated personal and collective histories. Part I establishes a broad overview of the personal experiences driving my studio practice and research enquiries. Drawing from Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness (2000) to explore readings of history, displacement, education and landscape, I elaborate on a negotiation of my cultural identity within the contentions about collective history and national identity. Part II looks at the negation of black cultural identity through covert impositions of Eurocentric culture and epistemology within education systems in my experience and within history. I employ concepts from Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2017) to develop socio-political readings of the television series Yizo Yizo, linking its thematic universe to heterogeneous black identities in post-apartheid South Africa. Part III presents how aspects of an oppressive history are manifest in the present, while offering more explicit interpretations of my body of work as a means for exploring the residue of history in the present.

Includes abstract.|Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-56). / The title is borrowed from the classic novel by John Steinbeck published in 1939¹. It is a story that ostensibly concerns the Joad family's move from the agricultural hinterland of America to the promised land of California. Steinbeck's intention is the sympathetic portrayal of the human cost of mechanised agricultural revolution. The story plots the collision of old value systems with new profit driven capitalistic drives (Thompson and Kutach, 1990:143). The attendant ramifications see a great shift in the rural population to the urban areas. Much arable land is bought up by faceless consortiums and banks, leaving the farm dwellers little choice but to pack up and leave in search of work, in this manner a way of life for hundreds of thousands of unsophisticated, hard-working people comes to an end.

My project interrogates traditional Western landscape painting in light of the contemporary understanding that ‘nature’ has been rearticulated, even plasticised and hence rendered malleable, through human action. The idea of a plasticised natural environment is concomitant with the age of the Anthropocene which has brought with it a tremendous rise in the use of plastic since the 1950s, and the consequent polluting effect it has had on the ‘natural’ environment. In recent years evidence indicates that traces of plastic are now in the earth, which suggests a need to rethink what exactly the ‘natural’ environment is comprised of. With reference to traditional Western landscape painting, my work explores the idea of a socially and materially constructed landscape. Utilising the medium of acrylic paint, I reimagine the landscape by using a material that embodies plastic. Removing the dried and solidified acrylic paint from its ground, the landscape painting is liberated from its supporting canvas and frame in an attempt to deconstruct traditional Western landscape painting. My project aims to rearticulate the language and meaning that is associated with landscapes and the natural environment.