Philisa: Ditaola

“Philisa asks us to remember our ancestors, who are woven into umlibo womoya (currents of energy), arching through blood and bone to inkaba (our origin). Our ancestors are energy that is transformed not destroyed. To heal OURSELVES is to heal our ANCESTORS too.
The work is about listening.
Listening to the land, listening to the water, listening to the blood and bones of our ancestors, listening to what our bodies remember.
Listening to where the songs were last sung.
Listening to where rivers used to be.
Listen. To the silence.
Listen to find the wound, where it hurts, why it hurts, how it hurts.
Listen for the medicine.
WE look at objects as an act of creation, conceived as a process of becoming. Philisa in OUR practice is not a notion of representation, for WE see and understand objects as born to carry out a purpose. Objects in our everyday exist as signals. Thus, when WE make objects, they are intended to function as triggers. Here WE speak of triggers as remembrance, and an act of remembering.”

Lhola Amira’s works address the wounds left by colonisation across many disparate contexts, to create spaces for healing through connection to the earth, the ancestral, and the spiritual. Here, Amira creates portals for memory and rejuvenation, where through a beaded curtain above a ceremonial healing bed of salt, one can hear the sounds of singing, to listen and remember.