‘Life has become a foreign language’ is Cassi Namoda’s first exhibition in Cape Town, on display at Goodman Gallery. It features new paintings produced by the artist during a residency in the city earlier this year.  The paintings of Namoda explore themes of imagination, feeling, memory, and regional context. These new works also meditate on the history of painting itself and consider the significance of photography in Africa. In addition to experimenting with shadows for the first time, Namoda moves between representations of haunting memories or visions within surrealist landscapes. ‘Life has become a foreign language’ expands on Namoda’s impulse to revisit historic scenes, adding layers of complexity rooted in a desire to recontextualise. By referencing archival images, such as Emperor Negus’ wet nurse and Mozambican photographer Ricardo Rangel’s reflections on life in Mozambique, Namoda marks moments of celebration and highlights the historic residue on Black women’s lives, offering new readings that interrogate the context that informed the original images. 

Source: goodman-viewingroom