Bickle was educated at the Durban Institute of Technology and Rhodes University in South Africa. She works between Zimbabwe and Mozambique, addressing the region’s long history of colonialism that has been, in part, documented, regulated and perpetuated through the written word of the colonizers. She is most fascinated by the fragments of history that remain from both official scripts as well as personal, everyday notes, cookbooks, scrapbooks and almanacs of the generations of Africans living under colonial rule.
Her works range from delicate, mixed-media pieces that refocus our attention on snippets of script (often reproduced on what look like old parchments) to playful ceramic works upon which a loose cursive script is written to large-scale installations of mixed media, layered with fragmented stories, poems, testimonials, diary excerpts and edicts to video projections and photography. Indeed, her artwork is “archaeology” of the present, incorporating everyday material into spectacular tableaux. A versatile artist, Bickle asks her viewers to question the potency, the prevalence and the differences between senses of memory and history, both personal and collective.