De Kat got your Tongue

Date: 8 October to 12 January 2025
Lizamore on Keyes, Johannesburg

In De Kat Got Your Tongue, I investigate how everyday objects, particularly Delftware, carry the lingering histories of colonial violence, appropriation, and aspiration that continue to shape identities in postcolonial South Africa. Through a mixed-media installation of Delft-inspired ceramics, textile jewellery, and soft sculpture, I reappropriate a material culture once associated with colonial power by replacing its familiar imagery with representations of my fictional protagonist, Fauna. Drawing on personal family histories and Frantz Fanon’s writings on colonial desire, the work explores the tensions between aspirations toward whiteness and the longing for lost cultural connections. I extend this inquiry to language, examining how Afrikaans, born from the diverse cultures of enslaved peoples, was appropriated, standardised, and separated from its creole origins. By reclaiming both visual and linguistic spaces through satire and reappropriation, the work contributes to decolonial discourse on material culture, memory, identity, and cultural ownership.

All photos by Lesedi Ledwaba.

Visage #1. 2025. Resincrete cameo set in faux-Persian textile with brass hollow beads on a ball chain.

Installation image of De Kat Got Your Tongue. 2025.

Corpses Flower. 2025. Resin crete cameos set in faux-persian textile in a glass vitrine with bamboo closure. Sculpture: 150 mm x 100 mm
x 30mm, vitrine: 300 mm x 100 mm.

Visage #4. 2024. Resin crete cameos set in faux-Persian textile in a glass vitrine. with bamboo closure. Sculpture: 150 mm x 100 mm x 30mm, vitrine: 300 mm x 100mm.

Visage #2: Shot Up. 2025. Resincrete set in brass, with glass seed beads on a brass ball chain. Neckpiece suspended in a glass vitrine with bamboo closure, pendant: 40 mm x 25 mm x 10 mm.

Visage #3. 2024. Polymer clay cameo set in brass on a brass ball chain. Suspended in a in a glass vitrine with bamboo closure. Neckpiece: 50 mm x 30 mm x 10 mm, vitrine: 300 mm x 100 mm.

Ear Ring #2. 2024. Fold-formed abstract ear in brushed brass om 3D-printed hand in a glass vitrine. Ring: 40 mm x 30 mm.

Phallus Erect. 2025. Faux persian textile with glass seed beads in a glass vitrine with bamboo closure. Sculpture: 180 mm x 50 mm, vitrine: 300 mm x 100 mm

Badkamer Teels. 2025. Sublimated slate tiles. 150 mm x 150 mm.

Badkamer Teels. 2025. Sublimated slate tiles. 150 mm x 150 mm.