Umdiyadiya is inspired by collective memories and seeks to track historical events in black households during South Africa’s turbulent recent past.
As a live performance work which includes an installation of 10 square meter hand sewed mutton cloth material and bandages, the artist Wezile Mgibe remembers time spent in both welcoming and unwelcoming spaces, reflecting on experiences with family and friends. Encountering kindness and softness within rough and uncomfortable spaces and situations, the work suggests that there can be love in spaces you might consider “broken” and that, in some instances, beautiful memories were made there which deserve to be remembered.
Umdiyadiya is a Xhosa word to describe the cloth installed inside the house to create rooms, it is used as a space demarcation. This kind of demarcation cloth is not only used in the Xhosa tribe but has iterations in other parts of the world.
