Music from My Good Eye

This body of work is inspired by my grandfather, Hippolytus Mothopeng, a jazz musician who performed in the 1960s and 1970s in Botswana after escaping apartheid South Africa in 1958. By the time I was born in 1996, my grandfather had gone blind and never physically saw me, but we shared a strong bond until he passed away in 2012. One of my grandfather’s dying wishes was for one of his offspring to become a musician, which unfortunately never came to fruition. However, in my practice, I have aimed to create a sort of visual album in the form of a book for my grandfather and my maternal family.

“Music from My Good Eye” is a body of work that addresses the history of musicality and activism in my family lineage. More than that, it is a visual and spiritual conversation between myself and my ancestors that communicates gratitude and empathy. Using various photographic languages, I have attempted to construct a nonlinear narrative that shows my maternal family’s lasting kindredship despite all the effects of politics, resistance, history, migration, loss, and separation they have endured for over more than half a century. I would like for the viewer to also take away a sense of hope, celebration, and triumphant accomplishment despite all these adversities.

Thero Makepe is an artist and photographer born and raised in Gaborone, Botswana. He currently works in between Gaborone and Cape Town, Johannesburg. His work uses sculpture, photography, and sound art as a means of exploring themes of childhood, memory, and his multidimensional experience as an African male. He is particularly interested in the gray area between collective and personal memory as well as reality and imagination.

Makepe’s work is informed by past and present narratives related to his upbringing and lived experiences in Botswana and South Africa. Wavering between photographing handmade dioramas and existing landscapes, his body of work contains images that evoke anxiety, tragedy, and fatality, whereas others reflect calmness, light, and eternal rest.

Makepe recently completed his BA in Fine Art with distinction at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town. In 2019, he was awarded the Tierney Fellowship for the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in partnership with the Tierney Fellowship Foundation. In 2020, he was selected as a finalist in the 2020 edition of the Blurring the Lines competition conducted by the Paris College of Art.