Central to the home is the language spoken in the household, growing up – the first language – and its connection to religion and cultural practices. Both Stephané E. Conradie and Kamyar Bineshtarigh consider creolised language and identity as central to their artistic practice. Conradie’s two glass assemblages speak to fragility not only in material but also of customs and life – a small embryonic bird sits encased in resin at the top of geestelike onderhouding (2022), along with half-filled miniature liquor bottles speaking to the ‘dop system’ used on farms in the Western Cape. Titled in Afrikaans, her works are in dialogue with Bineshtarigh’s paintings – a sympathy around problematised language exists between their work, one carrying the stigma of the Afrikaans oppressor and the other, the media enforced orientalism associated with Arabic script. Bineshtarigh’s ink and glue paintings form part of ongoing research into public narratives and archives of Arabic-Afrikaans, and the enslaved communities and indentured Muslim labourers that first recorded this creole language.

Perhaps the most intimate area of the home, the bedroom – and indeed, the bed – is often the place where introspection and reverie exists most strongly. Occupying the central floor of the exhibition is a work by Turiya Magadlela, consisting of two steel frame beds in an awkwardly stacked position. On closer inspection, the surface is revealed to be plastered in pages from an Afrikaans bible, its chapters and verses overlapping to envelope the frame entirely. The work’s suggestive positioning speaks of sexual repression in light of religious doctrine, while simultaneously embodying an exhibisionist quality that calls to sexual liberation.

Certain materials employed in this exhibition have a transient quality – often discarded, yet reconsidered in the careful practice of the artists included. Kirsten Eksteen’s Security Blanket (2021), a tapestry made of woven steel wool, is an example of the ubiquity of household objects as well as their consequent invisibility. Used to scrub dishes, the limited life of steel wool always implies the uncomfortable yet gripping boundary of the abject. Eksteen treats her material with the non-hierarchical value typical of flat ontology – considering the meaning ladened onto objects even/ and especially after they have been used: objects never lose their subjecthood and ‘things’ never really disappear.

In conversation, Carola Friess weaves with razorwire, plastic packaging and rope. Her use of razorwire suggests a subtle threat of demarcation – its message informing you that you are either outside or inside, that you belong or that you don’t – a shifting concept that can easily transfer. Precariously juxtaposed, the delicate strands of plastic and sharp blades are woven together within easy cutting proximity of one another. Friess, who has practiced as a surgical nurse for the last ten years, is interested in the complex relational characteristics of care, and her studio work strongly reflects the repairing acts of stitching or suturing.