013 · Dream
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In my dreams, I am rarely alone.
There is a woman who takes many forms. Sometimes she is a variation of my mother. Sometimes she is a woman I have never met. Sometimes she is Karabo Mokoena.1
Karabo Mokoena was a 22-year-old South African woman murdered by her boyfriend in 2017. Her death provoked national outrage and became closely associated with South Africa’s crisis of gender-based violence. Her photograph circulated through news and social media and lodged itself in my subconscious. Over time, it became entangled with an image of South Africa I could not resolve. Innocence and violence. Beauty and dread. Home and estrangement. My subconscious took the photograph and altered it until it became a simulacrum. A private, unstable image through which grief and accusation continued to flow. I remain uneasy about what my dreams have made of her image.↩