Lerato Shadi’s work challenges common assumptions to critique Western notions of history and make visible that which is invisible or overlooked. Working across video, performance and installation, and often employing repetitive processes, she argues the importance of centering - not just including - the marginalised body as a main figure of narrative experience. By placing herself at the forefront of her work, Shadi deals with the politics of cultural erasure and structural exclusion. She states: “It serves to challenge myself, and hopefully my audience as well, in how I/we are complicit in the violence of historical erasure by not fighting for a more inclusive and accurate historical narrative. I realised that – by just blindly or lazily accepting an inaccurate history – I would be sanctioning the problematic dominant narrative with my own inactivity.”

blank projects

Berlin

Villa Romana Prize

Dak’Art

Dakar

Cape Town

London

Richard Saltoun Gallery

Galerie Guido W. Baudach

Stevenson

Johannesburg

Paris

musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration

Musée D'Art Moderne De Paris

Osnabrück

Kunsthalle Osnabrück

Daimler Contemporary Berlin

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art

Prato

Centro Pecci

Tate Modern

New York City

The Jewish Museum

Lisbon

Museu Calouste Gulbenkian

Niterói

Museu De Arte Contemporânea De Niterói

South African National Gallery

Kindl Centre For Contemporary Art

Hamburg

Kunstverein Hamburg

Lerato Shadi

Series #2

Series #1

Tlhogo

Moremogolo (Go Betlwa Wa Taola)

Matsogo

Mosako Wa Nako I

Mabogo Dinku

Batho ba me

Batho Ba Ha Ba Tlhaloganye

I know what a closed fist means