Hopscotch

"My practice utilises an Afro-surrealist framework, which for me means engaging with the collective histories, the stories passed down, the warnings nobody questions, and an attempt to pull out what is being said underneath. Childhood games are part of that. They carried rules that went beyond the playground, rules that told you something about how the world was structured and what lived in it alongside you. Hopscotch was one of those. Where I come from, you didn't play it at night. Not because it was dangerous in the way adults usually mean, but because the night had its own occupants. Other entities. And the understanding was that they had their time just as we had ours. The game straddled that line and crossing it after dark meant you weren't respecting that boundary. I grew up with that cautionary tale, and somehow, without me consciously sitting down to think about it, it came back through an intense and unsettling dream. That dream made me ask something I keep returning to: how much of what we were told as children is still running quietly inside us, shaping what we see when we close our eyes? "

-Leonardo Sitoe

2026

Charcoal on canvas

56 x 63.5 x 4 cm

Framed