Kitso Lynn Lelliott

"The Tailored Suit" was produced as part of the director's Masters research report. It examines the period of 1950s Sophiatown and its socio-cultural legacy pertaining to race and gender in South Africa. It is inspired by the work of Can Themba, a writer and journalist who worked at Drum magazine in the 1950s.

This video was made as part of an installation of videos called Transatlantic Saudades.

Often inspired by her extensive research on historical sites, in the video By and By Some Trace Remains Kitso L. Lelliott engages a disused office buried deep within Constitution Hill, Johannesburg in order to excavate traces of the past within its walls. Accessible via a trapdoor and adjacent to a mortuary and police station, the room’s location invites us to ponder what else might have taken place there. Although today Constitution Hill functions as a heritage and judicial centre, until recently the site was most known for housing political activists and common criminals who had broken colonial rule or apartheid law. Lelliott’s video poetically reappraises this history by portraying symbolic acts of recovery and erasure as a means of voicing narratives that have heretofore remained untold.

"I, too, live in the time of slavery, by which I mean I am living in the future created by it." -Saidiya Hartman

"The Tailored Suit" was produced as part of the director's Masters research report. It examines the period of 1950s Sophiatown and its socio-cultural legacy pertaining to race and gender in South Africa. It is inspired by the work of Can Themba, a writer and journalist who worked at Drum magazine in the 1950s.

This video was made as part of an installation of videos called Transatlantic Saudades.

Often inspired by her extensive research on historical sites, in the video By and By Some Trace Remains Kitso L. Lelliott engages a disused office buried deep within Constitution Hill, Johannesburg in order to excavate traces of the past within its walls. Accessible via a trapdoor and adjacent to a mortuary and police station, the room’s location invites us to ponder what else might have taken place there. Although today Constitution Hill functions as a heritage and judicial centre, until recently the site was most known for housing political activists and common criminals who had broken colonial rule or apartheid law. Lelliott’s video poetically reappraises this history by portraying symbolic acts of recovery and erasure as a means of voicing narratives that have heretofore remained untold.

"I, too, live in the time of slavery, by which I mean I am living in the future created by it." -Saidiya Hartman