The photo collage series Foretold by the Mist, is part of a body of work based on narratives told in the Southern African San languages |xam and !xun that form part of the Bleek and Lloyd Archive. A testament to the lives and cultural practices of |xam and !xun people, the archive also provides a unique and rare insight into the impact of the Dutch colonization of South Africa. It is a collection of 13.000 pages of stories and interviews in notebooks, drawings, paintings and photographs of and by |xam and !xun people, collected by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1870s and 1880s. Folklore and personal accounts were told to them in |xam by several men called |a!kunta, ||kabbo, ≠kasin, Dia!kwain and |han≠kass’o, as well as a woman called !kweiten ta ||ken, and in !xun by four young boys called !nanni, Tamme, |úma and Da.

The photo collage series Foretold by the Mist is based on the narrative “How the Approach of a Commando is Foretold by the Mist” that is part of the Bleek and Lloyd Archive and told by Dia!kwain to Lucy Lloyd in Cape Town on the 11th August 1875. Using drawings on crepe paper, collage and animation techniques I visualize the narrative that details how |xam and !xun people perceived and encountered the Dutch colonists (the Boers) who threatened their lives, their way of living and their languages.