Girl Gone Authentic is a cultural creature with a very particular appetite.
Led by Khumoetsile Seamogano, Girl Gone Authentic begins with a literary inquiry into the knowledge passed between generations and the ways inherited wisdom finds new expression as the world changes.
Writing sits at the heart of the practice. Through essays and distinctive literary expressions, the house follows cultural undercurrents, draws connections between worlds and considers the meeting of inherited knowledge and contemporary imagination. The work extends into cultural research, narrative development and creative collaborations with artisans, exploring new expressions of traditional techniques and the cultural lives of materials and objects.
PROLOGUE
In 2017, Girl Gone Authentic began in Thailand with a simple idea: reconnecting kindred spirits to words and other beautiful things that matter.
The work soon led into stories of disappearing crafts, materials carrying generations of knowledge, and communities whose ways of making were being pushed aside by a faster world. The deeper the work went, the more complicated the stories became. Behind an object were histories, economies, aspirations and contradictions. People made things because they loved them, because their families had always made them, because there was no other work, and often because all of these things were true at once.
That realisation turned the gaze inward, too, prompting research and conversation around ways of living, making and consuming, and the stories told about all three.
Today, rooted in Southern Africa, Girl Gone Authentic continues to explore the knowledge held within the things people make, the lives they lead, and the worlds they build.
THE HOUSE
I. The Signal translates the emotional climate of the season, and asks the intriguing questions.
II. The Museum documents past and present indigenous ways and material culture.
III. The Cabinet is a seasonal collection of curious objects and books.
IV. The Atelier takes commissions to bring language to the worlds we build.