Makhubu, Seriti Se, Basupa Tsela—Where We’re at According to Lerato Shadi

The focus of this text is on three installations/performances by the South African artist Lerato Shadi: Makhubu, Seriti Se (both since 2014) and Basupa Tsela (2017/2018). The works dialogue with a remark made in a public interview in 2016, where Shadi postulated self-positioning in two diametrically opposed ways: to express one’s self-perception as “I am because you are” (which is situated within the philosophical traditions that are particular to South Africa), and the seemingly incompatible Cartesian “Je pense donc je suis”. While the initial context for this set of ideas stems from the writings of Yvette Abrahams, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Steve Biko and Frantz Fanon, Shadi’s remark is also connected with the student protests, which, since 2015, have claimed the recognition of situated subjectivities while aiming towards a decolonised South Africa. Shadi’s work operates within processes of political transition, of institutional and structural erasures. The artist asserts a position by means of dividual subjectivation, stating her subjectivity and agency in the beginning of the twenty-first century. According to Shadi, this position is claimed by calling out to those who have shown her the way.