08 Mar 2016

The creative arts industry is reeling in shock after the death of Botswana’s most recognisable artists, Otsetswe Bogosibokae who passed away last Wednesday at his home village of Molepolole after a long illness.

Speaking in an interview, Thapong Visual Arts Centre coordinator, Reginald Bakwena said it was a great loss to the creative art industry.

“Otsetswe Bogosibokae was a highly motivated individual and he contributed immensely to the visual arts and he will be greatly missed,” he said.

He said the late Bogosibokae always made an effort of coming to Thapong Visual Arts Centre where he would interact and advice artists on their work.

“He was someone who would go to each artist’s studio and help them with pointers on what they were working on and he had a passion for art,” he said.

Bakwena further said Bogosibokae had high hopes for Botswana’s art, and wanted both the artists and their work to show significant growth every time they worked on their stuff.

Besides being an avid painter, Bogosibokae’s career was in teaching and arts administration, and in 2006 he won the prestigious Thapong Artist of the Year Award.

“The Thapong board of trustees, members and the artistic community extends their condolences to the family of our late brother, artist and friend,” said Bakwena.

He said Bogosibokae would be laid to rest on Saturday at Ntlolengwae ward in Molepolole.

During a previous interview he conducted with Veryan Edwards when he was still alive, Bogosibokae said he started art at school in Form 2 in 1989 and later on worked with artists at the Kgosi Sechele Museum and also exhibited there.

“After Form 3 and 4, I met Velias Ndaba who was working for Thapong and operating out of the Botswana National Museum. I joined his drawing classes and was introduced to the idea of art as such, as opposed to student art.

In these drawings, I kept my personal touch but loosened up. At the time of the Tlhale workshop in 1998 at Kagisong Centre at which Adam Madebe was teaching, I was working on scenes of daily life influenced by Ndaba’s expressiveness. My weakness was the figure, which at the time, I could not see,” said the late artist.

“To me the best art is the simple work that touches the soul. I felt more of an artist after the workshop and I also associate Thapong with uplifting my status as a professional,” he continued.

Bogosibokae further said Thapong and the workshops provided a home for artists as art is seen as playing in Botswana.

“The experience of being with other artists helps one not to lose oneself. If an artist has missed out on training, workshops can open things up. It is so important to meet other artists, to converse and to work.

The most important thing to do in art is paint yourself: that is, what you think and feel about your environment. 

Art is about identity and we need to reject all the readymade materials and work with what is here: the animal skins, the shells, the sand, the sky,” said Bogosibokae.

Speaking on inspirations during his interview with Edwards, Bogosibokae said Rantefe Mothebe was perhaps the most pure and uninfluenced artist in Botswana.

“The issue is what to take and what to leave. Artists have imaginations and art has no boundaries. We know it helps to be diverse so that we can make something truly good.

We have to aim at finding the true meaning of art,” he said. Ends