Palesa Motsomi is a self-taught South African female visual artist, and a full-time creative designer living in Johannesburg. She has a printmaking qualification from Artist Proof Studios (2017), and previously exhibited at Open Studios Joburg in May 2022, and her photography series, African Proverbs inspired by xenophobia in South Africa at August House Open Studio in November 2016. In August 2021 her works were part of a collection curated and exhibited by Edg2020, titled ‘New Modernism’, and in July 2022, another group exhibition titled ‘Artist as Shaman’. In March 2022 her work was part of a collection curated and exhibited by Art Bank of South Africa, titled ‘In Stranger times, and in February 2021 an exhibition titled 'Becoming': What is & What is not. Her work is influenced by spirituality, being black, a woman, an African, and the noise in between.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My works are a combination of probing and personal presentments of being African. Growing up in an environment diluted with understanding about being African, I find myself as part of the noise. I am following breadcrumbs of being African, a black woman, also being “black” in either gender to understand being African both spiritually and worldly in all obscurity of cultures, traditions and beliefs, navigating through the space between time.
One African proverbs says, ‘When the music changes, so does the dance”. The music has changed considerably over time and so has our dance in many aspects of being – or has it? We constantly transform to a fluid of many “things” that feel like home.
My work is a combination of fictional and realistic elements to marry my findings and the reality I see around me, taking parts of different mediums to create a form – mimicking altered narratives, languages, beliefs and bodies scattered in African history.
