How to make a country

On Moshoeshoe’s day (11 March) 2023 Lerato Bereng collaborated with us to put together a soft launch of the publication How to make a country. The book was produced on the occasion of the the exhibition of the same name that took place at FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Angoulême, France. The exhibition and publication were curated by Lerato Bereng and featured the following artists/ collectives: Ba re e ne re Literature (Lesotho), Zineb Benjelloun (Morocco), Dineo Seshee Bopape (South Africa), Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi (South Africa) and Frida Orupabo (Norway). 

The launch consisted on a reflective talk between Ba re e ne re director Lineo Segoete and Stevenson curator Lerato Bereng on the process they were involved in to include the Ba re dictionary component of the book, as well as their personal relationships with their language and culture within the global and creative arena.

The Ba re dictionary was a years long creative project open to the public, which sought to encourage the invention or creation of new Sesotho words relating to popular culture, complex emotions or simply language for language sake, all in the spirit of imaginatively (read playfully) expanding our vocabularies and contributing to the growth of Sesotho.

Feel free to browse through or download the Ba Re dictionary zine below.