Siviwe James, Mount Frere (Eastern Cape), South Africa, 1990.

Siviwe James is a fashion practitioner and thinker that creatively interrogates the fragments of fashion that allude to the psychologies, histories and disruptions of African fashion but also as a potential medium to materialise new ideals of modernity.

Truth, Reconciliation and Commission X AFROPRESENT, 2021. Video, 7:13 min.

Truth, Reconciliation and Commission X AFROPRESENT is a short film montage that presents compassionate listening as an act of witnessing and transformation. The work shows that facing the violent nature of South Africa’s history can lead to restorative actions of encountering truth as it enables 'rethink our present as a site of connection and revival.' Dressed bodies and fashion become evidence, historical traces of silencing imposed by the coloniser but also a way of resisting through (re)insertion and resurrection.

Please sit down and experience the act of witnessing.

Download Siviwe James' ProvocationTruth, Reconciliation and Commission X AFROPRESENT