Boitumelo Gladys Seebela

Boitumelo Gladys Seebela is one of twelve master embroiderers from the Northern Cape whose work forms part of a collaborative series installed in the Judges’ Deliberation Chamber of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Facilitated by artist Leonard Shapiro in consultation with archaeologist David Morris, the project involved translating ancient rock engravings from the Kimberley region into large-scale textile panels.

Working during an intensive three-day workshop, Seebela and her fellow embroiderers reinterpreted archaeologically accurate tracings of the engravings through stitch, scale, and surface. Her contribution forms part of a broader material and conceptual transformation in which incised stone markings are rendered into thread, shifting from archaeological trace to contemporary cultural expression.