“What is it?”
“Don’t you see?”
“I don’t see anything.”
“You don’t see the snake. There, that is the tail. The head is on the ground.”

Iteration 1: Khesaseedi…, or was it Mothorolle? invokes Santu Mofokeng’s seminal essay ‘Ancestors/Fearing the Shadows’, where he recounts a conversation with his sister, who calls him outside to observe a “transit” on a windy day in Diepkloof, Soweto. Where she perceives a snake, he sees only a whirlwind. Iteration 1 assumes this divergence as a proposition, charting parallel pathways through which plural ways of seeing might emerge.

The artworks included in Iteration 1 extend these meditations: whether reflecting on the chemical composition of the Johannesburg skyline causing Mofokeng’s whirlwind, investigating scientific (a)symmetry, or foregrounding the amateur astronomer’s role in imaging the night sky, each transforms observation into a site of cultural and scientific plurality.