Tiyani Rikhotso
Fine Art BA (Hons)
Michaelis School of Fine Art
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms: Fine Art / Art History / Writing for the Arts
My location: Cape Town, South Africa
Tiyani Rikhotso
First Name: Tiyani
Last Name: Rikhotso
University / College: Michaelis School of Fine Art
Course / Program: Fine Art BA (Hons)
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms: Fine Art / Art History / Writing for the Arts
My Location: Cape Town, South Africa
About
Tiyani Rikhotso is a writer, artist and creative strategist based in Cape Town, South Africa. She graduated with a BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2022. The degree was awarded with a distinction in Discourse of Art. She is passionate about the power that words and art-making have to confront oppressive histories and disrupt limiting representations of black femininity.Drawing on the personal and familial archives, her most recent work, Rest as the Practice of Freedom, explored how rest can be an act of redress for generational fatigue when embraced by black women. Held in photography, poetry and weaving, the project anchors rest as a practice that frees our bodies from the strain of oppressive systems. Furthermore, a rest practice gives black women the energy to dream up and enact liberated futures.
An exploration of how rest, when embraced by Black women, can redress generational lineages of fatigue, relieve our bodies from the strain of oppressive systems and gives us the energy to dream up a future rooted in freedom and liberation. Grass mats are used as a symbol of rest as I reflect on my personal and familial relationship with fatigue. The disruption of the horizontal placement of the mats (that would point to a resting, sitting or sleeping body when they are in use) is reflective of a denial of rest that Black women have faced throughout history and still grapple with today. My practice attempts to offer up rest to the tired women in my family and beyond by transforming the surface of traditional grass mats. This gesture is expressed as I interweave strips of my old bedsheets into the mats - the added padding emphasising a yearning for comfort, softness and ease. The material shift and expanse of the mats are ultimately reflective of visions of progress that hope to see black women liberated from disproportionate levels of fatigue and the inability to carve out time for and spaces of rest.
Competitions
