LET’S CAFÉ
The Conversations
This year’s sessions of Let’s Café focus on the theme of silence—what remains unsaid and how we establish trans-local practices of listening and solidarity.
Session 1: "Why is it so silent here?"
Dr. Refiloe Lepere to Lead an Intimate Conversation on Silence and Solidarity with Artist Lerato Lodi
The South African State Theatre, in association with Black Archive Studio in a two-part webinar series featuring transdisciplinary scholar and storyteller Dr. Refiloe Lepere in conversation with multidisciplinary artist Lerato Lodi.
Exploring the intricate layers of Lodi’s artistic process and her experimental project space, Black Archive Studio, this series serves as a vital intervention within the framework of the lebone exhibition.
About the Participants
Dr. Refiloe Lepere (@aynfifi) is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand and a community-accountable theatre-maker. A Columbia University Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity, her work explores black feminist aesthetics and decolonial healing. Since 2015, she has served as a resident dramaturge at the South African State Theatre, bringing over a decade of international directing experience to this dialogue.
Lerato Lodi will detail her intervention through the Black Archive Studio, a space dedicated to experimental practice and studio research currently highlighted through the lebone exhibition, supported by the State Theatre’s Incubator Programme.
Date: 25th March 2026
Time: 7:00 pm SAST / 6:00 pm CET
Zoom: https://fhnw.zoom.us/j/68468076248
Session 2: "Practices of solidarity"
…further information to be announced shortly…
Date: 31st of March 2026
Time: 7:00 pm SAST & CET
Zoom: https://fhnw.zoom.us/j/69252191283
Let’s Café – The First Burst of the New Season 2025
The Intimate as a site of knowing
Curated by Refiloe Lepere & Navid Ghavidel
We are delighted to open the new season of Let’s Café with a constellation of three projects that turn toward The Intimate (/ˈɪ
ntəmət/) as a site of knowing: Hidden Familial Currents (Navid Ghavidel & Amir Tehrani), Story Circles (Refiloe Lepere & Mamaki Mlangeni-Barrett), and Morapedi – One Who Prays (Lerato Lodi). Together, they invite us to consider how aesthetics, archives, and family intertwine as spaces where care, resistance, and imagination are practised.
Each work begins from the personal, from the remembered gestures of a grandmother, the undercurrents of family histories, or the shared stories of women theatre-makers, then reaches outward, transforming private memory into collective inquiry. Through photography, shrine objects, or performative storytelling, these artists reframe the archive. Not as a repository of the past but as a living relation: a way of holding, transmitting, and remaking what has been silenced or fragmented.
Across very different geographies – Iran and South Africa – the three projects share an ethics of listening. They reveal how art becomes a site of reconciliation with our inheritances, a rehearsal for alternative genealogies, and a bridge between generations, faiths, and communities. This first burst marks a new chapter for Let’s Café: one that embraces intercontinental curation, embodied scholarship, and trans-local dialogue.
We warmly invite you to join us in conversation to think, remember, and imagine together how our aesthetic practices might continue to care for the stories that shape us.
19th November -
6pm (SA) /7.30pm (Iran) /5pm (CET), Hidden Familial Currents (Navid Ghavidel & Amir Tehrani)
26th November -
6pm (SA) /7.30pm (Iran) /5pm (CET), Story Circles (Refiloe Lepere & Mamaki Mlangeni-Barrett)
3rd December –
6pm (SA) /7.30pm (Iran) /5pm (CET), Morapedi – One Who Prays (Lerato Lodi)