The Body as Archive: Inside Mosa Anita Kaiser’s “Residues of Proximity”
by Glory Onyekwusi Jul 2, 2026
A new exhibition at The Bag Factory reframes the human body as a living record of memory, inheritance and lived experience.
What if the body isn’t only where we live, but where we keep things histories, emotions, inherited experiences we never chose to carry, but carry anyway?
That’s the question at the center of Residues of Proximity: One Body, Many Parts, a solo exhibition by South African artist Mosa Anita Kaiser. Presented by The Bag Factory and curated by Melusi Masike, the show treats the body as a living archive — a site where memory endures, transforms and returns.
The Body as a Living Archive
Through vivid imagery and deeply personal reflection, Kaiser invites viewers into an intimate encounter with the traces that shape our lives long after the moment that created them has passed.
Rather than treating memory as fixed or distant, the exhibition reveals it as active — something that moves through gesture, ritual and everyday experience. The body, here, carries histories of longing, joy, grief, repair and resilience, not as static record but as ongoing process.
The works occupy the space between what has been lost and what remains, gathering fragments of self across generations and lived realities. In an age defined by rupture and displacement, Residues of Proximity offers a meditation on what persists — and how memory continues to shape who we are, and who we might yet become.
Here, the body is neither spectacle nor object. It is a vessel: for remembering, for repair, for becoming.
About the Artist: Mosa Anita Kaiser
Mosa Anita Kaiser is a South African-born, lens-based artist working across photography, sculpture and installation. Originally from the Free State, she now lives and works in Johannesburg.
Kaiser completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Rhodes University in 2017, then went on to the Advanced Programme in Photography at the Market Photo Workshop. Her practice sits at the intersection of visual culture and identity, engaging visual literacy as a tool for understanding how we consume the world and construct a sense of self.
Recurring themes in her work include:
• The power dynamics of the camera
• The socio-political positioning of women
• Multi-cultural intersections and internet culture
• The body as a site of both violence and beauty
Her work has appeared in a number of group exhibitions, including Occupying The Gallery at Gallery 1, Keyes Art Mile (2023); (in)sight with Through The Lens Collective at Victoria Yards (2019); Counter Narratives at the University of Belfast’s Analogue Eye (2020); Stilled Life at the Turbine Art Fair (2020); and Disclosure at SMAC Gallery.
