Brian Motnshiwa

The Quiet Violence of Dreams

Montshiwa is a South African interdisciplinary artist who uses performance, photography, painting, video, printmaking, sound and texts to explore notions of materiality and memory. Their work questions the way in which histories are disseminated as well as how value systems are constructed. They are interested in epistemologies of redressing invisibility and in seeking more nuanced languages of presenting overlooked and erased narratives, including their own. They use unlinked metaphors and journeys to introduce a fluidity in how yesterday is told and presented.

The quiet violence of dreams is a multimedia diptych consisting of a projection of a 2 minute, 12 second video shot in a darkroom by the artist and a static degree certificate, composed by using different signifiers from text to prison uniform and medical logos. The title of the work comes from a book by K. Sello Duiker titled “The quiet violence of dreams”, which is about a young student at Rhodes University who has a difficult time keeping up with his own strange mind. He is sucked up in making sense of his traumatic past in a violent country.

This work, The quiet violence of dreams, is framed around the ready-made Degree Certificate, to explore the story of students as they migrate from various spaces in search of a better life and education, carrying with them torches to light the darkroom of an imaginary promised land, in research of greener pastures. The work is also a homage to all the students who never got the chance to get to the object of their desire.