Boima Boo Ke Bo Jereng (2025) is a love letter to the women in my family who are no longer present in flesh, but remain with me in spirit. This mixed-media collage honours the ways they raised me, weaving together their strength, struggles, and love into the fabric of my becoming. In the gestures of bending, lifting, and standing tall, I see their endurance, their quiet power, and their ability to cradle both grief and joy in the same breath.

Against the backdrop of the checkered migrant bag, a symbol of labour and survival in African histories, I wear my grandmother’s nightdress, my face covered in calamine, just as my mother once did. These layered details embody not only memory, but also the weight of their journeys. The blue frames cutting across the composition echo borders, expectations, and traditions that both confine and define us, yet within them I find an inheritance of resilience.

As a trans woman, my path into womanhood is stitched with their lessons and silences. In honouring their burdens, I lighten my own. The work interrogates what we inherit and what we choose to carry, exploring cultural, spiritual, and political weights that shape Black South African identity today.