South Africa (Republic of)

MADEYOULOOK’s newly commissioned sound installation Dinokana (2024) explores themes of land and water displacement, sovereignty and rehabilitation. Focusing on perennial strategies of repairing severed relationships to the land, the artists consider the symbolism of the resurrection plant, which, in apparent death, reanimates upon receiving water to draw attention to how two communities in the north of South Africa have approached cycles of loss and repair.
MADEYOULOOK signals various histories that have controlled how Black and indigenous peoples access their surroundings to examine the instrumentalisation of natural resources as forms of capture and alienation.
MADEYOULOOK contemplates the political and social capacity of water and draws on it as an infrastructure of repair. The immersive multi-channel installation marries sound comprising traditional songs about rain, harvest, and water divination with snippets of interviews with growers and land-workers from different generations and communities to consider the cyclical and insistent cross- generational forms of reconstitution.
Visitors are invited to inhabit the installation as a sanctuary of rest and refuge. Dinokana runs on a 30-minute interval, with 20 minutes of sonic activity, followed by a 10-minute intermission.