Yonela DODA

Yonela Doda, born in 1998 is a Cape Town based collage mixed media artists. Doda work is premised on the Catharsis Theory and the deep connection she has with her physical and emotional aspect of her life as well as the things she wishes to fix within herself. Doda does this by dealing with the distortion, healing and purification of her own pain and the pain caused by others onto her.

 Doda’s interest in looking at the fragmented and distorted body (particularly the woman body) by experimenting with collage and thread has led her to her interest in extended and prosthetic bodies as well as ritualistic and transgressive body. Doda explores and confronts the violence towards women in South Africa, how and why the body comes to matter, what the body can and is able to do as a material, bodies that she comes in contact with, how sometimes these bodies are welcome and invited and how sometimes they are not. Doda also speaks of the process of going through to get through that result in Self-Knowledge which is strongly influenced by her interest in the Catharsis theory which was first used in a psychological context by Josef Breuer.

Doda’s collage work is influenced by the creating of the hybrid body beyond the physical limitations of the human scale; extending and distorting the body to create new identity. Doda also uses stitching in her work(s), a way to communicate the process of healing and purification.

 Doda’s ways of recalling her vulnerability through herself and her own experiences, it’s heavens and hell might sometimes view as violent, which in some cases is. This helps Doda not reject self but instead visit and highlight those vulnerabilities and help herself heal. Finding a home in self is one of the important subjects that Doda highlights in her works. Doda describes “ It was when I found home within myself that I realized the importance of self-love, peace and nurturing self before others”.