Thulani Rachia Rachia

I am South African artist and I work with performance, music composition, sculpture, and moving image, informed by my training in architecture. Growing up within the spatial legacies of apartheid - an inherited architecture of segregation and control - shapes my understanding of how the built environment can structure social hierarchies.

My work is guided by what I describe as a critical-speculative inquiry - a question in my mother tongue isiZulu - that holds both critique and possibility: “Siwaguba kanjani amaphupho ethu agqitjwe kulezindonga?” (“How do we excavate the dreams laid to rest in these walls?”). This inquiry enables my exploration of material legacies of violence and how spaces and materials marked by historical harm might be reimagined, opening possibilities for reparative futures.