TSHEPISO MOROPA

Moropa’s work begins in fragments: archival images, memories, folktales, and dreams, which she assembles into hand-crafted collages that feel at once ancient and futuristic, personal and collective. Working across both digital and analogue forms, she constructs visual narratives that reimagine the archive not as a fixed record but as a living and evolving space of possibility. Rooted in the oral traditions of her childhood, her compositions carry the emotional weight of stories passed down through generations, using symbolism, repetition, and abstraction to explore ancestral knowledge, inherited memory, and the dreamlike spaces where these ideas converge.

Her practice increasingly extends beyond the flat surface into immersive installations, video art, and sculptural forms such as peep-boxes and dioramas. These intimate and exploratory spaces act as portals into poetic and emotive archives where the past and present are in conversation.

Through her work, Moropa examines the relationship between memory, history, and contemporary identity, forging narratives that bridge temporal and spatial divides. Her process balances careful research and intuitive experimentation, celebrating the beauty of the past while inviting reflection on its resonance in the present.

Moropa has received significant accolades, including the Out of Africa Award (2022), Contemporary African Photography Prize (2024) and the V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography (2025). She has garnered notable international attention, and has been included in presentations at Paris Photo, with Michael Hoppen Gallery, in From the Ground Up, Galleri Image, Denmark; and at 1-54 London with THK Gallery.

Moropa has participated in the RE-Memory Virtual Residency (2022) followed by the PESP4 Art Creating Programme (2024). Moropa’s work stands part of global collections, including the Ditau Collection, Workers’ Museum Collection, and notable private collections.

Courtesy THK Gallery, Cape Town/Cologne.