PRESS RELEASE

Dineo Seshee Bopape

‘You Fucking Horrible Bitch’

Oct 30 - Dec 19  2009

Preview: Friday   Oct 30   14:00–17:00

Mart House Gallery presents the second solo exhibition of Dineo Seshee Bopape, ‘You Fucking Horrible Bitch’. The title of this show comes from one of Dineo’s paintings out of a series of seven, all shown in this exhibition, produced after the stormy end of a relationship. Most of the works in this show reflect a sea of emotions: angry, dreamy, playful, bitchy. Post-breakup stress has resulted in a very personal level of art. The drawing installation ‘Love Strung’, more than one hundred drawings seemingly circulating within each other, is about desire, lust, anger, intimacy and fantasy.

In the video ‘Birds’ Milk’ Bopape cut her ex-lover out of a love letter video after their break-up because she had dramatically told Dineo that she did not want to be in any of her works. The ‘story’ of the video is deleted, only the abstraction is kept. Although intimate, the work is very inviting at the same time. The work pulls you in, moves you around, and leaves you stunned.

‘Silent Performance’, a slide installation of eighty photographs confronts the gender issue. Dressed up in sock-stuffed briefs and a fake mustache, Bopape takes a humorous look at the norms for appearance, behavior and attitude.

Besides the textile sculpture and the photo collages from 2008, the video works; ‘You Send Me’ and ‘Me And You’ will complete this exhibition. Regarding the impact of these videos, artist Marlene Dumas once said: ‘Many artists use their own bodies in their work, but not many understand 'the face and body' of there medium as well as she does. She uses the video with a sophisticated aggression that pulls you in with charm, but mocks you at the same time’.

Dineo Seshee Bopape was born in 1981 in Polokwane, South Africa. She graduated with a B Tech from the Durban Institute of Technology in 2004. She had a two year residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam (2005-2007), and she is currently studying for her Master's degree in Fine Arts at Columbia University, New York.

Dineo Bopape was selected for the exhibition Younger Than Jesus, the first edition of The Generational, a new triennial at the New Museum, New York, 2009. Other recent shows include Rebelle: Art And Feminism 1969-2009 at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, Arnhem, 2009. She was the winner of the 2008 MTN New Contemporaries Award, South Africa. She has held solo shows at the KZNSA Gallery, Durban (2008 and 2005), and at Mart House Gallery, Amsterdam (2007). Recent group exhibitions include In Transition: Russia 2008 at the National Centre of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2008); .ZA young art from South Africa at Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena (2008); Cape '07, Cape Town (2007).