Tshepiso Moropa
Tshepiso Moropa (1995) is a visual artist and archivist based in Johannesburg with an educational background in Psychology, Linguistics and Research. Hailing from Johannesburg, South Africa, her unique artistic journey has been marked by a deep passion for the medium and an unwavering commitment to storytelling through the art of collage. Her hand-crafted collages marry a multitude of archival imagery and materials to create visual dialogues exploring the past and present tense of black people, the African diaspora and historical archives. Through her work, Tshepiso strives to breathe new life into forgotten narratives and to create a visual symphony that resonates with the depths of human experience. Tshepiso has been part of numerous exhibitions including her first international exhibition at Oakstop Gallery in Oakland, California (USA) and featured in publications such as 1854. Photography and the South African newspaper The Mail and Guardian.
Moropa's work explores themes of identity, family relations, violence, race, gender, love and sexuality, solitude and the sense of belonging. Her subject matter is either a self-portrait or archived images of African women found in library resources or research sites on the internet. A rich source of material is also found in African folkloric tales that the artist translates from Setswana and re-constructs as short animations, Moropa explores connections between South Africans living today and their forgotten ancestors, describing this process as a way of bringing the figures in the photographs back to life. In this way the archive becomes an important site of excavation and recreation.
For the artist, the archived image serves as a proxy for memory - particularly memory relating to cultural heritage and the present time: "they celebrate blackness, being black, being proud of ourselves and our heritage and culture. It is not about finding a sense of belonging within others. It is about finding a sense of belonging within ourselves
