To Break A Bitter Fever
30 Jan - 8 Feb 2025

Curated by Kefiloe Siwisa in collaboration with the artists: Gabrielle Goliath, Gogo Mahlodi, Gugu Duma, Lebogang Mabusela, Maneo Mohale, Natalie Paneng, Nombuso Mathibela, Rachel Lowe, Simnikiwe Buhlungu and Thuli Gamedze. 

for us.

In the face of an inconsolable crisis — of pervasive gendered and sexualised violence in South Africa — the collaborators of To Break A Bitter Fever have come together to create moments of respite where we can, in community, 

hold.
hold close.
hold one another closer.

This condition of violence has stripped us bare, robbing us of space and time to feel, to emote. Instead, we have learnt to perform resilience and strength — just enough to survive — and in doing so, restrained our 

weeping,              wailing,               raging,              grieving bodies.

Amid the proliferation of self-care rhetoric, care work can feel uncomfortable, burdensome and out of reach. This is our offering of simple and tender practices that will water our ability to care for ourselves and sustain communal well-being in small, meaningful ways.

Pressed between the precarity of ‘healing’ and ‘being here’, how do we resist + rest(ore) ?

This project invites us to feel through one another’s skin, sinking into slowness, flow, release, play, beauty, joy, dreaming, presence and breath,

to break this bitter fever.

Public programming interventions will take place on the 30  and 31 January, 1, 7 and 8 February 2025. 

To Break A Bitter Fever was developed through the Art Exchange: Moving Image, a curatorial development programme for curators from Sub-Saharan Africa organised by LUX and the Yinka Shonibare Foundation, delivered in partnership with the British Council. 

Thank you to the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios for giving this project a home and to the many hands and hearts that have shaped it. 

Thank you to the work of Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams, the contributors of the publication, Lesser Violence Volume I, edited by Amie Soudien, the programme, Global Blackness Summer School ’23: For Wholeness. Black Being Well curated by Dani Bowler and the work of countless organisations such as Women for Change for unknowingly serving as a quiet source of inspiration and grounding.

Thank you to the waters that continue to hold us.

Soft Opening
 Thursday 30 January 2025
 14h00 – 17h00 

Open to the public

Waning on your loved ones
Friday 31 January 2025
13h30 – 15h00

How do our most intimate environments perpetuate silent violence? Using play-play and coloring, participants will gather around the dinner table with Lebogang Mabusela to sit with the unspoken politics of domestic spaces and familial relationships. 

Ditaelo tsa moya 
Saturday 1 February 2025
10h30 – 12h30 

Tapping into the body as a site of ancestral intelligence, Gogo Mahlodi will lead an exploration of dreams and their stories, revealing the insights they hold as tools for deep restorative practices and spiritual well being.

Who Do We Hope to Be?
Friday 7 February 2025
13h30 – 15h00

How might freedom feel in motion ? Through sonic meditations, slow movement, and guided reflection, Nombuso Mathibela and Gugu Duma invite participants to imagine how repair can emerge as collective rewriting of damage into alternative possibilities for life.

[Altar]-nate Words 
Saturday 8 February 2025
10h30 – 12h00 

Stitching together excerpts from two deeply generative and compelling works: Gabrielle Goliath’s ‘This song is for…Vol I’ and Maneo Mohale’s ‘Everything is a Deathly Flower’, the artist and poet converse in snippets of sound and text, in the hopes of creating a sonic altar to alternate words and ultimately, alternate worlds. 

I'll hold your hand  
Saturday 8 February 2025
12h30  – 13h00 

A closing movement led by curator Kefiloe Siwisa

Each workshop and intervention is limited to 20 participants. RSVP via kefiloesiwisa@gmail.com

Interventions that will accompany To Break a Bitter Fever for its duration

A Soft Machine
Working with ‘soft’ machinery as her collaborator, Natalie Paneng’s series of weapon prototypes tests speculative systems of security and self defence in the absence of effective human interventions.

baby can I hold you tonight 
A sequence of wearable hugs, by Simnikiwe Buhlungu and Thuli Gamedze, to tend to one's innermost need to be and feel held. Strapped around the belly and over both shoulders, the padded raindrop-shaped soft design will offer support, containment, and rest to wearers in the space.

A Letter to An Unknown Person No. 5 
‘A Letter to an Unknown Person’ captures the impossibility of holding onto time, as Rachel Lowe’s fleeting window drawings unravel into a knotty mesh of unspoken stories. Encountering the work, visitors are invited to write a letter to an unknown person—to bury or burn—as a hopeful act of release and relief. Courtesy of the British Council Collection.