Sonya Mmakopano Rademeyer
What remains through time, slowness and stillness
Oliewenhuis Art Museum
Mangaung / Bloemfontein
South Africa
Opened on 15 July 2025 by Ashraf Jamal
what remains through time, slowness and stillness is the title of Sonya Rademeyer's Solo Exhibition happening in the Oliewenhuis Art Museum in Bloemfontein/Mangaung. In this layered exhibition, Community collaboration and more-than-human kin (live snails) are viewed as equal epistemic partners. Notions of historical erosion and cultural erasure due to early colonisation are explored through the traces created by the more-than-human-kin.
The altar piece to the exhibition is the building of a Cultural Wall or ‘Meraka’ (place of gathering) within the sanctum of the Art Museum. The construction of the Cultural Wall uses post-natural and indigenous methodologies which include materialities such as clay and animal dung. Within the exhibition space known as the 'Reservoir' the opportunity exists for volunteers, community members and audience to co-create the Meraka.
Through deliberate acts of cultural decolonisation, dialogue is created between the Oliewenhuis exhibition space and rural Meraka Cultural Village which is situated on the outskirts of Bloemfontein. The exhibition attempts to decenter the urban Oliewenhuis Art Museum, essentially enforcing a bi-directional and fluid exchange with the indigenous Museum situated on Meraka Cultural Village rural Land.
A live-art performance will activate both spaces.
Visitors to the Reservoir will be able to enjoy a visual arts installation with video projections co-existing with more-than-human-kin collaborators actively contributing towards the evolving visual arts installation.
The experience of what remains through time, slowness and stillness exhibition is the creation of a cultural holding space.
At the heart of the exhibition is community-building, relationality, dialogue, and reflection through decolonising artistic practices.
Phot credit: MyMalaik_Photography
archive of roundabouts through time
An evolving collaboration with more-than-human-kin (live snails).
See the process here
the blindness of empathy
2023-2025
10 min 20 sec
the blindness of empathy premieres at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum (Mangaung) during the what remains through time, slowness and stillness exhibition.
Captured in a remote area near Nababeep (Northern Cape, South Africa) the work explores the complexities around bridging cultural divides. Serving both as physical and metaphorical divide, the hands carefully seek to find holding space in order to perform the sensitive work around social healing. The video expands into the historical Nama ways of forgiveness, where torn pieces of fabric are buried into the Earth. An essential part of this social healing practice is passing the fabric into the hands performing the healing (forgiveness), as well as placement of the foot into the traces of the one being forgiven.
The collaboration includes Dina Christiaans and Sonya Rademeyer (performers), Nkosenathi Koela (music) and Marianna Dixon Williams (USA) as videographer / video editor, as part of Sound and Soil (University of Johannesburg 2022-2023 AIR Residency).
grond
2025
00min 53 sec (looped)
grond premieres at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum (Mangaung) during the what remains through time, slowness and stillness exhibition.
Captured on the grounds of Oliewenhuis Art Museum, the work explores the artist’s internal grappling with notions of belonging. Viewed from an anti-colonial perspective, the video images her own inner acknowledgement of non-belonging as a descendent of voortrekker-settler lineage, whilst struggling with her endless notions of belonging. As the red Earth from Bainsvlei (Bloemfontein) moves against and upwards towards her body, she becomes metaphorically pushed backwards by the Earth herself, inherently confirming that she merely resides as a settler on African Land.