Tshepiso Moropa

A recipient of the Out of Africa Award (2022), the Contemporary African Photography Prize (2024), and the V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography (2025), Moropa’s work approaches the archive as a living space rather than a fixed record. Using collage as both method and medium, the work cuts, layers, and reassembles archival and personal images to question photography’s claim to truth and to open the image to imagination, intuition, and possibility.

 

Moropa works primarily in collage, drawing from Dinaane (Setswana folktales) and Ditoro (dreams) as interconnected systems of knowledge. Through ambiguity, repetition, and open-ended narrative structures, her work constructs overlapping temporalities in which meaning circulates rather than concludes.

 

In Moropa's practice, Ditoro ga di tle fela (dreams are not random). This transitional state is inhabited by the disembodied and suspended figures that appear frequently in Moropa's artworks, pointing to different temporalities and inherited modes of comprehension.

“My work is informed by the timeless wisdom, moral lessons and magical elements found within Sestwana stories. Each folktale carries a unique blend of history, cultural values and human experience, serving as a wellspring of inspiration. Beyond its aesthetic and storytelling dimensions, Dineelwane is driven by a desire to preserve Setswana folklore and celebrate the cultural heritage of the Setswana people.”

 

Tshepiso Moropa