I’m Sophie. I’m from a small town in the Eastern Cape, South(ern) Africa called Makhanda, or iRhini. I love and fear the sea. I grew up in the household of two working artists, and so my life and my social ecology are deeply enmeshed in creativity and criticality; not only in the professional sense, but as modes of being in the world.
I am interested in many different things. I am particularly interested in the moments where these many different things come into contact with one another. The closest I have come to defining my role in one single sentence is to say: I am an artistic-decolonial-ecological-researcher, primarily concerned with social transformation. (I prefer not to over-identify with any one thing, as, like me, they are all in continuous motion.)
My academic background is in cultural intervention, social justice, art-activism and decolonial theory. My applied background is in curation, facilitation, writing, art making, community organising, embodied research and permaculture design.
When I was a teenager, and very angry, I began social transformation work through community organising and facilitation. It was then that I saw the power of collective dialogue in unstitching deeply entrenched beliefs about race, gender, class and sexuality – and began a conscious unstitching within myself. This is a life-long un/weaving. Creating gatherings with intention has stuck with me as a formidable way to sit with and work through our collective tensions, pains and paradoxes.
Now, as an adult (and still very angry), I’ve started making art, and creating space for other people to make art. After founding a small and slow art residency with my family called We Move, I became an advisor to other residencies. This process of creative facilitation lead me to design the Creative Guidance curriculum, in which I can – hopefully – be there to guide people in enriching their practice/s, composting creative blocks and developing a greater sensitivity to their internal and external worlds.
I see more and more how connected ecological collapse is to racial-capitalism and to a broader culture centred on domination and disconnection. It is because of this that I am constantly in search of actionable and tangible ways to intervene with the culture of coloniality. My research and artistic work specifically looks at methodologies of dissolving perceived borders; borders of self, of land and of human-nature.
What does this have to do with ‘Art’, you ask? My understanding of art is not necessarily a romantic one. I don’t think art is almighty, nor do I think the myth of ‘the lone genius’ is useful. I think that art is a survival tool; it is bodily reaction to our world; it is a call and response; and it is irrevocably and foundationally relational. There are many things that art is capable of: communication, disruption, emotional evocation, archiving. But at its core, it is simply something we cannot help but do.
Sometimes we repress our urge to make, and then we get very very sad, or very very numb. Like any relationship, we can cultivate our creative capacity or let it atrophy. My hope here is to support you in strengthening your unique relationship with creativity and expanding your innate capacity for creative expression.
Please feel free to reach out for collaborations, for Creative Guidance, for a chat, OR if you are a wealthy benefactor who would like to purchase some paintings.