Bale takes Blue Tapestry to Alliance Française
Goitsemodimo Kaelo | Monday September 14, 2026 06:00
Titled Blue Tapestry- Chapter III: Where Memory, Movement and Belonging Meet, the exhibition by local visual artist and creative director, Kenneth Bale opens on September 18, in the evening.
Through this multidisciplinary project, Bale brings together painting, storytelling, literature, installation and dialogue in an exploration of what it means to belong to a country that, like its people, continues to change.
Bale says the exhibition is not simply a collection of artworks, but a platform that forms part of an evolving project conceived as a living archive, with each chapter presented in a different location and shaped by the communities and environments it encounters.
“The journey began with Chapter I, Unrooted, at Mokolodi Nature Reserve. There, 18 paintings created entirely in shades of blue explored themes of belonging, migration and becoming against Botswana's natural landscape,” Bale said.
Chapter II moved the conversation to Maun, a town deeply connected to ecological movement, tourism and cultural exchange. Now, Chapter III arrives in Gaborone, where the project creates a meeting point between visual art, literature and cultural dialogue.
Blue, which dominates Bale's artistic language, carries meanings that extend beyond colour. In the project, it becomes a metaphor for water, memory, healing, migration and hope. Its presentation during Botswana's Independence Month adds another dimension.
Blue is deeply embedded in Botswana's national identity, most visibly through the national flag and its cultural associations. The exhibition also draws connections between blue and the prominence of the colour in leteisi, linking personal memory and cultural expression to wider questions of history and identity. Through these layers, Blue Tapestry asks audiences to consider how history is remembered, inherited and transformed.
Bale said the exhibition also challenges the idea that national identity is something fixed. Instead, it presents identity as an ongoing process influenced by movement, encounters, memory and the changing experiences of communities.
He said this is particularly relevant in a country whose story continues to be written through generations navigating tradition and modernity, local belonging and global connections. He said at the centre of the project is a question that is as personal as it is national: “How do nations, like people, continually become?”
'It is a question that gives the exhibition its deeper significance,' he said. As Botswana celebrates its 60th Independence, Bale's work offers an artistic invitation to pause and consider not only where the country has come from, but also what it is becoming.
Through its combination of art and dialogue, Blue Tapestry- Chapter III positions culture as an important space for that conversation. The exhibition ultimately suggests that belonging is not merely about having a place to call home. It is also about memory, movement, inheritance and the stories people continue to tell about themselves and their country.