Oratile Papi Konopi

“We found love…”

07 November 2020

FNB Art Joburg

Oratile Papi Konopi and the progression of Ênê

In the beginning was the word. The word was a god. The god said let there be light and there was light. What was said came to pass. Things are into existence. Words manifest. Gods create. They name. They decide. Building. Breaking. Correcting. Fixing. Growing. Limiting. Killing. Birthing. Words are gods: used, worshipped and protected by those who choose to invoke them.

When multidisciplinary artist Oratile Papi Konopi established Bua Le Ênê, it was to consider the godly potential of words and languages to form and mold sociopolitical frameworks like black love and masculinity. Derived from the everyday call to communicate in Setswana, Bua Le Ênê is not only a prompt to speak but a challenge to listen, to understand, to complicate and holistically consider the things we say and how they transpire in intimate settings.

Bua Le Ênê is a natural progression from Ênê : an artistic study of masculinity. The examination was set up in response to the artist’s contemplation with being assumed into manhood before understanding what manhood entails, begets and expects of him. To study what he refers to as “the matrix of masculinities”, Ênê saw Konopi using conceptual photography to articulate the restless ways he saw masculinity being performed before him in the spaces he occupies.

Titled HIM (2017) the series of conceptual photographs saw Konopi photographing a bare-chested man bound and caught in a web of yarn meant to visualise the matrix. However before the series was concluded, Konopi found that asking sitters to perform the tensions exempt him from interrogating his own experience of being assumed into the matrix. In response, the photography series evolved into a performance created in collaboration with rapper Gyre. Titled Ênê : The Matrix of Masculinities (2018), the once-off performance sees Gyre and Konopi trying to detangle themselves from a man-made web of yarn meant to represent patriarchal masculinity. In addition to asserting the fragility of patriarchal frameworks, their struggles to break free allude to limitations of heteronormative binaries. To elevate the message, the performance uses Gyre’s mixtape Queernomics (a queer hip-hop reading of masculinity) as narration.

Following this opportunity to engage an audience in real time, Konopi chose to further his investigation of masculinities. His reasoning was two-fold. First, he found that using the body to read gender has the potential to be limiting and violent. Secondly, Konopi wanted to deliver his message to communities beyond those familiar with art spaces and codes. His art had to mirror lived experiences.

Then Rangoato Hlasane taught Konopi a course on independent publishing as an art form. This led Konopi to encounter the ways that The Medu Art Ensemble used posters to resist, communicate and educate. Parallel to looking for an accessible medium, Konopi looked for ways that gender is validated beyond the body. With his search landing on linguistics, he chose to study the things we say.

To reconcile his need for a form that can live outside the white cube with his interest in linguistics, the artist then began using a Riso machine to make the posters, which were later scanned and enlarged that today form the basis of the Bua Le Ênê (2018 -) series. Taking on a form that is kin to Daily Sun posters seen on traffic light poles, the words in Bua Le Ênê posters capture the gendered nature of the things we say.

Tlogela ngwano.

O jewa ke enge?

Khaba lenja.

Ok’salayo siya jola.

Kgalemela lenyatso.

I prayed for you.

Sofa s’lahlane.

Uphi Makoti?

In isolating the above and more phrases from our everyday the posters ask their audience to consider how gendered norms are transmitted, inherited, and maintained because our linguistic heritages are charged with prompts.

Then as a step beyond building an archive and using art as anthropology, the Bua Le Ênê series recently began subverting the things we say by imagining the things we could say. In 2019 Konopi rewrote the Lord’s Prayer to reflect and insert femme power into Christian conversations about divinity. Mme wa rona yo kwa legodimong leina la gago a le itshepisiwe

Although Bua Le Ênê has become the primary series since 2018, the artist’s previous project continues to live through it because Ênê now refers to the character that Konopi embodies while investigating genders. Taking their cues from empathy, Ênê can be anyone. Since the posters made their debut, the Bua Le Ênê series has gone on to include formats that can only further audience engagement and as such the instruction to speak to Ênê. These formats include airtime vouchers and a billboard. In addition to being artwork the airtime vouchers are functional in how they allow their holders to have human interactions with Ênê.