Curated by Kefiloe Siwisa
To Break A Bitter Fever launches today at Bag Factory, Johannesburg, as the fourth instalment of the Art Exchange: Moving Image programme. Curated by Kefiloe Siwisa in collaboration with artists Gabrielle Goliath, Gogo Mahlodi, Gugu Duma, Lebogang Mabusela, Maneo Mohale, Natalie Paneng, Nombuso Mathibela, Rachel Lowe, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, and Thuli Gamedze, the project responds to the ongoing crisis of gendered and sexualised violence in South Africa. Through workshops, meditations, and collaborative dialogues, it aims to create spaces for respite and collective reflection, and offer moments to gather, rest, and heal.
“Amid the proliferation of self-care rhetoric, care work can feel uncomfortable, burdensome and out of reach. This is our offering of simple and tender practices that will water our ability to care for ourselves and sustain communal well-being in small, meaningful ways.
Pressed between the precarity of ‘healing’ and ‘being here’, how do we resist + rest(ore)?
This project invites us to feel through one another’s skin, sinking into slowness, flow, release, play, beauty, joy, dreaming, presence and breath,
to break this bitter fever.”
Rather than offering escape, the programme insists on engagement—confronting present realities while creating space for possibility. Through moving image, text, sound, and embodied practice, the artists will explore ways of holding one another and ourselves.
To Break A Bitter Fever will run at Bag Factory, Johannesburg from the 30th of January until the 8th of February 2025.
To Break A Bitter Fever programme posters designed by Lesego Mashabela.
PROGRAMME IN DETAIL
Soft Opening
Thursday 30 January 2025
14h00 – 17h00
Waning on your loved ones
Friday 31 January 2025
13h30 – 15h00
How do our most intimate environments perpetuate silent violence? Using play-play and coloring, participants will gather around the dinner table with Lebogang Mabusela to sit with the unspoken politics of domestic spaces and familial relationships.
Ditaelo tsa moya
Saturday 1 February 2025
10h30 – 12h30
Tapping into the body as a site of ancestral intelligence, Gogo Mahlodi will lead an exploration of dreams and their stories, revealing the insights they hold as tools for deep restorative practices and spiritual well being.
Who Do We Hope to Be?
Friday 7 February 2025
13h30 – 15h00
How might freedom feel in motion ? Through sonic meditations, slow movement, and guided reflection, Nombuso Mathibela and Gugu Duma invite participants to imagine how repair can emerge as collective rewriting of damage into alternative possibilities for life.
[Altar]-nate Words
Saturday 8 February 2025
10h30 – 12h00
Stitching together excerpts from two deeply generative and compelling works: Gabrielle Goliath’s ‘This song is for…Vol I’ and Maneo Mohale’s ‘Everything is a Deathly Flower’, the artist and poet converse in snippets of sound and text, in the hopes of creating a sonic altar to alternate words and ultimately, alternate worlds.
I'll hold your hand
Saturday 8 February 2025
12h30 – 13h00
A closing movement led by curator Kefiloe Siwisa
The following interventions will accompany the To Break a Bitter Fever for its duration.
A Soft Machine
Working with ‘soft’ machinery as her collaborator, Natalie Paneng’s series of weapon prototypes tests speculative systems of security and self defence in the absence of effective human interventions.
baby can I hold you tonight
A sequence of wearable hugs, by Simnikiwe Buhlungu and Thuli Gamedze, to tend to one's innermost need to be and feel held. Strapped around the belly and over both shoulders, the padded raindrop-shaped soft design will offer support, containment, and rest to wearers in the space.
A Letter to An Unknown Person No. 5
‘A Letter to an Unknown Person’ captures the impossibility of holding onto time, as Rachel Lowe’s fleeting window drawings unravel into a knotty mesh of unspoken stories. Encountering the work, visitors are invited to write a letter to an unknown person—to bury or burn—as a hopeful act of release and relief. Courtesy of the British Council Collection.
ABOUT ART EXCHANGE: MOVING IMAGE
The Art Exchange: Moving Image programme is a collaborative and cross-cultural curatorial professional development and exhibition programme for early to mid-career visual arts curators from Sub-Saharan Africa working with moving image. The programme is supported by the British Council and organised by LUX, the UK agency for the support and promotion of artists working with moving image, Yinka Shonibare Foundation and Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, Nigeria.