P.5 Artist Dineo Seshee Bopapee’s film, Master Harmoniser (Ile aya, moya, la, ndokh) will be on view throughout the day at Community Book Center, located on Bayou Road, a center of Black life in New Orleans. 

Dineo Seshee Bopape’s work explores connections and histories of the African diasporic experience and the legacy of slavery across time and geography. Her project for Prospect.5, “Master Harmoniser (Ile, aya, moya, la, ndokh)”, is a video and sound installation featuring an animation made of abstract drawings made from clay sourced from ports in South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, Virginia, and Louisiana. Summoning the four elements in Wolof, Yoruba, Ga, and Nguni/Sepedi, Bopape’s clay abstractions reference both the violence inflicted upon Black people and the waterways and terrain along which they’ve migrated—either by force or in flight. 

The audio component features sounds of waves and wind, cries of joy and pain, and the music of perseverance, resistance, and celebration. Together they place visitors in a transitory moment informed by centuries of trauma and triumph, and ask us to consider our survival as a spiritual negotiation with our ancestors, with the land on which we live, the elements that compose our world . . . and something(s) else.

Thank you in advance for honoring the Covid-19 protocols in place at the venue.