F/W 2017 sees the latest addition to the Hu series created in collaboration between Pharrell Williams and adidas Originals. Their Statement and Inline collections allow wearers to travel in space and time due to design inspiration being taken from the 80s and 90s, as well as the utilitarian influence from LA’s hiking culture.
A connection to previous designs in the Hu series provides a familiar thread that ensures the Pharrell Williams touch. The emphasis on retro outdoor aesthetics with playful accents, combined with weather-ready protection makes this collection one for the sportswear fanatics, sporty teens and future health goths looking to add some colour to their wardrobe.
This latest offering features head to toe items in yellows, greens, pinks and purples, giving wearers a portal to late 80s and early 90s energies. Subtle graphics and striking contrasts breathe life into the collection and provide a head turning, cohesive identity.
Simple cuts make the apparel crucial for the foundation of a streetwear look. Basics such as a t-shirt, hiking leggings and a tank top are complemented by outwear garments including a hooded sweat, gilet and 3L jacket.
The footwear may present a delightful experience of dejavu for Hu series fans. The adidas Originals and Pharell Williams popular Hu NMD silhouette returns, this time reincarnated as a hiker’s fantasy – the Hu NMD TR. The original Primeknit construction and came stabilizer make an appearance atop an NMD BOOST tooling for comfort and support. The original outside is replaced with a sawtooth tooling, providing extra grip.
Sandton, often described as the richest square mile in Africa, is a concrete and glass habitat that is constantly transforming. In the last few years, it’s evolution has been increasing at a rapid rate. Yellow sand, piles of bricks, and orange cones have become the welcoming party for anyone walking or driving through the area. Buildings are getting taller, wider, and even more over-the-top. We are exposed to the operations of the corporate and construction surgeons who make building plans and rip our electric cables to give the area a new face lift.
Sandton. A place married to the rich with luxury as its maiden name. However, for this marriage to continue there has been a necessary combination of the formal and informal sectors. People who were never imagined as the occupiers of streets in Sandton, have now made a way for themselves to be accommodated for in this space. While they may be viewed by some as the people who are out of place, they are in fact the arteries that keep the money pumping through Sandton’s veins.
Photographer Jonathan Kope saw an opportunity to photograph Sandton in the midst of its evolution. I interviewed him to find out more about the story behind the shoot.
Tell me about the decision to make the backdrop for the shoot Sandton?
When a production decides to shoot on ‘location’ in Johannesburg, especially in a commercial or fashion sense, creatives often seems to want ‘ generic South African urban grit’. Teams shoot the CBD, or on top of buildings overlooking the cityscape and aim to capture the ‘real’ city. But the repetition of that urban trope ends up being a dishonest representation of the wider city as it dismisses the more ‘everyday’ places as unworthy of celebrating. The idea of shooting Sandton – the most banal, normal, peak Joburgy place –seems somehow both an interesting departure from the tired usual and the most obvious backdrop for a pairing that wants to take a more realistic and honest approach to shooting the city.
What is the basic story that you were trying to get across with placing the model in various locations in Sandton (particularly spaces that show construction sites and unfinished buildings in the background)?
Sandton, to quote its promotional material, is the richest square mile in Africa. It’s also experiencing an unprecedented building boom, with a new shining corporate HQ seemingly going up on every corner. This burgeoning creates an interesting landscape of contrasts – slick surfaces and roadways torn apart to lay electrical cables, Sandton’s old landmarks about half-finished buildings. It’s a perfect mess of a place in which to shoot; atop the initial concept of depicting somewhere well known and well recognized, we see said space in total disarray. It’s odd.
And it’s also a moment in time that is finite – we needed to shoot it before it was put back together.
In the initial email about the shoot there was mention of an informal economy that has developed around this area to cater for those who are part of building this new Sandton landscape but who fall outside of the formal economy. Can you share a bit about how this falls into the story?
It’s yet another layer of complexity which makes the site so compelling, or at least so compelling at present. Sandton is usually a sheltered enclave peopled by the wealthy of Johannesburg. Much of what happens in Sandton takes place in hi-rise office blocks, or inside the various malls around the area. One seldom sees people out on the street, except perhaps getting in and out of Ubers to nip down to the Gautrain. This describes much of suburban Joburg – no evidence of street life. The key exception to this being the CBD. Now, however, with the intense construction work taking place all around it, there is an influx of workers who ordinarily wouldn’t be seen in the area, and most definitely are not taking lunch breaks at the Flamingo room on Nelson Mandela square. So a sort of informal trade has developed to service the needs of this populace, and it all takes place on the street outside the shopping mall. There are food stalls, tuck-shops and the like doing a brisk trade with the men in safety gear and dirty overalls, as professionals in luxury vehicles drive past to park their cars for the evening’s shopping at the Sandton Woolies. Suddenly, temporarily, Sandton has a semblance of being a vibrant and dynamic place.
Share a bit about your creative and conceptual process while putting this shoot together?
We, that is Bee and myself, have found that we are in a similar creative space. We want to create ‘honest’ natural imagery that is tied to a place and a time and that reflects a certain common humanity that is recognizable and without pretense, but is at the same time alluring. A mix of the odd and the normal. Just like people.
Conceptualizing becomes a fluid process when the team is in sync. We started with the kernel of ‘why are we shooting what we’re shooting’ and ‘why here’ and built layers from that, with the help of some spontaneity, good logistics and good luck.
When you are in the mood to dance, there is nothing better than walking on to the dance floor and feeling the vibrations of the music coming through the speakers. Cukia Kimani and Yann Seznec found a way to enhance this experience by creating visual permanence to music.
Cukia has a background and Computer Science and Digital Arts while Yann has a background in music composition. With their project titled Painting w/Music, they let curiosity and their willingness to experiment take the lead. When asked about how this was done, Cukia replied, “Coming from a Computer Science background I know about all of these different algorithms and then I did visual arts. You know, how to put algorithms to make circles appear all over the screen based on random numbers. But then I was like ‘What happens if I just change this one value to be midi data or frequency data?’” And this was the foundation of the project.
When Painting w/Music was originally pitched to the British Council, the idea was for Cukia to create visuals based on music that Yann would compose. This would be done by feeding the music into the programming code that Cukia had written. However, as the months passed and Cukia and Yann became more familiar with each other’s work, they decided to add in a new element to their project – a custom controller.
The controller creates room for a performative, interactive level to their larger project. This allowed those who were interested in the project to be more than just passive observers. Instead they would be able to experiment with how the project works. When reflecting on this addition to the project Yann explained that, “The main thing was moving towards a performance tool which is something I really like working with so I guess this is what happens in a collaboration. You start with an idea and each person involved brings or pulls the project in a way that they are interested in exploring. I think we both ended up being really interested in this idea of building a tool that was kind of applying these ideas of kind of visual permanence of music to a performance. It is also fun because then it means that we can do a performance at the end which was a cool focus for the project.”
This evolution of the project made it possible for them to be on the lineup at this year’s Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival. With Yann taking control of the music and Cukia managing the coding side of the performance, the audience was drawn on to the dance floor by flashing colours and shapes dancing across the screen along with them. “The core concept was to play a whole set of music, tunes and improvisations that were created entirely with this custom controller box that was built for the project. And then all of that, the music and my actions, the buttons I pressed and the things that I twisted and pulled, all of that created these visuals,” Yann explains.
Excited by how far their project has evolved since their initial idea, Cukia and Yann expressed that this is unlikely the end of the project. Their curious nature will more than likely see them pushing their project even further.
Check out their YouTube to have a look at some of the visuals they have created.
Seated next to the catwalk, and watching the girls in black dresses remove the black sheets covering the runway, we waited for the usual fashion show ritual – dimming of lights and music starting to play through the speakers to let people know the show is about to start. To our surprise, three men in white t-shirts with rolled sleeves walked across the runway to take their positions with drums, a mic and an electric guitar set up on the side. From the get go everyone at the show knew there was going to be an electric energy that would flow through the room. The drummer tapped his drumsticks together and we were ready to rock and roll.
As the vibrations from the live music met our feet, the first model walked out with badass, dark cherry lips and messy hair while wearing black jeans and a long, tan coat. Vintage Zionist hit us in the face with their AW18 collection. Leopard print, leather jackets, skinny jeans and torn white t-shirts have never looked this good. Their fitted jackets with extra long sleeves swirled the guitar riffs in the air as each model marched with a determined stride in Doc Martins. Our eyes were continuously teased by garments hanging off shoulders, with pops of colour that were unusual for the Vintage Zionist brand.
We were only given a moment to catch our breath before the screen behind the runway came to life again. Mimicking the fuzzy texture that appears on a TV screen when there is no signal, grey and black glitches jumped across the screen in between “AFROPUNK” and the Vintage Zionist logo. With the lights dimming once again, we were transported into an AFROPUNK-inspired fashion dream. Hardcore punk music guided the models as we were introduced to the magic that can be made with denim and recycled leather. Garments were accessorized with earrings and tongue rings, making an immediate connection to the imagined wearer of the clothing.
Oscar Ncube, one half of Vintage Zionist, explained that the AFROPUNK collection could be viewed as a history lesson. The original punks – the tribesmen and women from Africa – were referenced through images of people with large lip rings and patterned scarification placed on t-shirts. The words ‘stay punk’ emphasized how the punk aesthetic was derived from men and women from the continent. Continuing with our history lesson, the collection paid homage to the likes of Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix and Little Richard, the black icons who curated the rock and roll sound. This awareness of black cultural influence carried through the entire show.
Embracing DIY culture in fashion, Jimi Hendrix song lyrics were written all over items of clothing as a reflection on the importance of self-expression. “AFROPUNK” and other words looked as if they were tagged across garments, bringing to mind the influence of graffiti and making art accessible. Ripped black denim was seen alongside fish net dungaree dresses accented with silver studs while Leather tassels danced around the models’ backs.
Music, fashion, art. The potency of this combination can only result in the ultimate rock ‘n roll uniform compounded by the aesthetic similarities between AFROPUNK and Vintage Zionist.
Toyin Ojih Odutola explores the sociopolitical constructs of skin colour through her multimedia drawings. This central focus comes from her personal journey of having to move from her home in Nigeria to the conservative state in the US, Alabama.
“I’m doing black on black on black, trying to make it as layered as possible in the deepness of the blackness to bring it out. I noticed the pen became this incredible tool. The black ballpoint [pen] ink on blackboard would become copper tone and I was like ‘wow, this isn’t even black at all!’ The black board was like this balancing platform for the ink to become something else. I instantly recognized this notion, of how we think something is a certain way and in reality it is something else…” Ojih Odutola says in an interview about the show, My Country Has No Name (2013) in the International Review of African American Art.
A Subtle Address, 2013
Most of the figures she draws are coloured with black ink, but not all of them referencing being African or of African American descent. This is an extension of her question, “What is black?”. Her images require the viewer to interrogate the framework they consciously or unconsciously use to interpret skin colour and its connotations.
For her first solo exhibition in New York titled To Wander Determined, Ojih Odutola presents an interconnected series of fictional portraits telling the lives of two Nigerian aristocratic families. These portraits consider the fluid nature of identity through the use of charcoal, pastel and pencil. She engages themes related to space, class and colour with the figures portrayed in luxury homes. However, the angles of lines used to construct these homes on canvas do not always align, making the backgrounds appear slightly distorted. The distortion invokes a sense of discomfort in the viewer, and it is up to the viewer to figure out the meaning of that discomfort.
In a conversation with Ugandan photographer Darlyne Komukama, she explained her belief that the human condition is about being connected. This is a thread that she carries through in how she produces her work, from working with her friends and other artists, to ensuring that work is accessible on the internet and in other public domains. Working with other people also allows her to see the possibilities available when trying to stretch her own practice.
Expressing to me that she enjoys sci-fi inspired images and strange visuals, Komukama was excited about being part of the ColabNowNow programme put together by British Council Connect ZA at this year’s Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival.
Komukama finds it quite difficult to put into words how to describe her practice. She explains that she often assumes that everyone else is an intersectional feminist, but has found that it is important for her to directly state that she identifies as one. This comes across in the photographs she produces. Photographing Ugandan women as powerful, timeless, statuesque goddesses is how she translates her intersectional feminist grounding into visual messages. “And people always ask me, ‘Did you shoot this in Uganda? Are these Ugandans?’ And I’m like ‘Yes!’ I shot this in my neighbourhood. I shot them with my friends. And my friend is the one who made the clothes. And the other did the makeup,” Komukama says with a giggle. Expressing that being a black woman living in this world comes with such heaviness, her work is a direct response to the trauma, stereotypes and forms of oppression that women of colour have to deal with. Women of colour are still diverse, full beings, and this is what she captures with her photography.
When asked about the photography scene in Uganda, Komukama explained that there is a vibrant scene. Some of it is amateur, and some of it is professional. “I have been on the internet in Uganda for a really long time and there has always been this conversation about how we do not see ourselves, and how important it is for us to fill the space with ourselves, so we can find ourselves. I also like how there are a lot of photographers who engage with the bodies of black women. Maybe that just comes from the work that I looks for. There is a small art scene but a lot of people know each other and the scene is growing, and it is beautiful to be there in this time.”
Komukama has a number of accounts on various platforms scattered across the internet with images she has been taken, but she also finds it important to share photographs with Ugandan women so she tries to get her work into the public domain. This is evident in an installation about black women’s hair she did with two other Ugandan women titled The Salooni. They built a local Ugandan hair salon, and made the inside their vision of a future salon. “A place that is compassionate and has no judgment, and is joyful, and gives out dope hairstyles,” Komukama explains. The Salooni was erected at a number of street art festivals including Chale Wote in Accra. “We got so many women who lived in the area who came to the salon and just owned it. They started doing people’s hair, got their hair done, brought their kids. It was so exciting”
A second installation she produced with another friend involved building a box in Kampala which contained images pasted on the walls with a video camera in the middle. They left questions inside the box which people passing by could answer on camera. The result was a video which comprised of all the stories people had shared and gave a reflection of everyday life in Kampala.
Komukama’s work does not always result in an output that people can see but there is always an element of human connection and connection to the earth.
Sophia Nahli Allison is an experimental documentary filmmaker and media arts educator. History is highly contested, both as an academic subject and as an archive of living memories. Michel-Rolph Trouillot in his 1995 book Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, he points out that history is constructed through power relations that allow the idea of a linear, meta history to be constructed through the strategic silencing of histories – histories often blocked out through othering. Allison’s focus is on re-imagining and documenting history – or histories – that are pushed out. This includes memories, dreams and multiple interpretations of freedom through the voices of women the youth and queer people of colour.
Having received her BA in photojournalism, and working towards her postgraduate degree in documentary filmmaking, still and moving imagery are her mediums of choice with regards to materializing these ambitions. She has received recognition for her efforts, including being named the Student Video Photographer of the Year by the White House News Photographer Association earlier this year.
Allison’s photographs possess a sense of movement. Viewers are transported into the moments she captures, and are easily able to feel the emotional vibrations translated through her lens. Each image is accompanied by the story of the people photographed as well as the conceptual labour she has invested into assembling each image. Her trained eye is a tool she employs to capture in-the-moment shots as calculated shots.
Her work as a media arts educator has seen her teach high school students photography and film skills through a lens that focuses on social justice and identity. This is a way she continues the necessity to have other narratives seen and heard. In this way she encourages self-expression and the importance of socially conscious documentary work while explaining the significance of subliminal messaging that is often present in other forms of photography and film productions. Allison has seen how her courses have promoted critical thinking and self-awareness in the young students she has interacted with.
Check out her website to have a look at more of her photographs and to view her short films.
“I used to say I’m not political, but I realised that everything you do is political. Walking down the street is political,” she says. “So, it is political, but it doesn’t have to be propaganda.”
Although much attention was given to Egyptian street art after the revolution in 2011, the trigger for the Arab Spring, street artist Aya Tarek has been making work since 2008 when she was just 18 years old. She found her fine art classes at the Alexandria University too restricting, and so she cleaned up her grandfather’s studio and invited her friends over to experiment with non-traditional art forms. The walls all over Alexandria soon became her canvas.
“I think Downtown Alexandria inspired everything I do. The architecture from back then was really great. I used to hang out and see these amazing buildings in Art Deco. Even during the 90s, the city was stuck in the 60s, so the comics I used to buy were from the 60s. Everything was time capsuled in this era and we didn’t have anything else. So it was like I was in a different era, in this era,” Tarek explains in an interview with Cairo Scene.
Challenging the institutionalized approach to art creation and art display, her work has seen her travel to Beirut, Berlin, Cologne and Frankfurt. Her work has seen her recognized as one of the first serious street artists from Alexandria. This caught the attention of independent filmmaker Ahmed Abdallah, and led to Tarek being featured in the film Microphone, which explores Alexandria’s art scene.
Tarek participated in a successful exhibition titled White Wall Beirut where she and a number of other street artists from around the world were invited to create work in the Beirut Art Centre, as well as around the city. Receiving a positive response to her work, Tarek commented that she prefers making work on the streets and not within exclusive art walls. By creating work on the streets people who are intimidated by galleries and museums are able to engage with her work.
Her contribution to the White Wall exhibition
While Tarek appreciates the attention given to artists after the revolution in 2011, she tries to shy away from making her work directly political. She explains that she would like her work to seen for its artistic value and not simply because she is an Arab woman creating work within a highly contested political environment. Despite this desire she acknowledges the fact that existing and creating cannot be divorced from politics.
Nigerian photographer Jenevieve Aken focuses on documentary photography, self-portraits portraits and cultural issues. Her work was selected to be part of the Photographic Museum of Humanity, which launched in 2013. As the first internet museum dedicated to contemporary photography, the museum created a category specifically for photography from Nigeria. This was curated by LagosPhoto founder Azu Nwabogu, and shows work by emerging photographers exploring themes related to identity, relationships, and cultural representation. Aken’s self-portrait series Masked Woman with a character named “super femme fatale” is a visual exercise of subverting the patriarchal male gaze.
With a fascination for how events shape characters, her photographic series ‘Great Expectations’ takes inspiration from the book by Charles Dickens. In the book the character Miss Havisham is left at the altar, leading to a breakdown and becoming a so-called “man-hater”. Aken translates this into a Nigerian context, photographing herself in wedding attire. This series is a commentary on the pressure women face to get married and the emphasis placed on marriage as the ultimate goal for women. Her works also highlight how this has an effect on the emotional wellbeing of women, leaving some to feel a sense of incompetency when not married despite the successes they may have achieved.
There is a haunting melancholic aura that surrounds these images which comes directly from the silence communicated in her eyes. A photograph with her lying on the bed in a wedding gown highlights the mournful attitude attributed to this series. A white dress, pearls, a bouquet and a wedding magazine are symbols of the institution of marriage. Being covered as surrounded by these objects while alone invites viewers to imagine the internal dialogue she is having with herself about the desire to be a bride.
Ugandan artist Stacey Gillian Abe uses glass as her primary medium to construct sculptures that reflect on the objectification of women in Uganda. “I love shiny things, that’s why I work with glass. What’s more I relate to the dual personalities of glass: liquid and hard. As a young Ugandan woman I am also both fragile and hard at the same time,” she states in an interview with IAM Magazine.
At the pop-up exhibition (Re)Thinking Feminism & Black Womanhood that formed part of the Kampala Art Biennale 2016, Abe engaged with this central issue directly through chocolate as a medium. When asked about her work she expressed that, “I want to confront people with how men look at women in our society, because it’s a taboo subject here. First they look at our bodies, as if we are just candy for consumption.” Abe created vaginas in different shapes, forms and colours and presented them as chocolates, served on a dish at a set table as a way to emphasize that “All women are unique”. But this work also speaks to how women have been treated as objects of desire and consumption.
Her glass work continues this gesture towards highlighting how women are treated, as well as attempts to direct viewers to a more empowering and holistic attitude towards women. An example of this was a site-specific glass installation titled Strange Fruit Konyagi that she produced while at a residency in Tanzania. Through the use of Konyagi [a spirit produced in Tanzania] bottles hung in clusters in the shape of the Tanzanian Neem tree, she aimed to present a woman as a “nurturer and giver of life”. The significance of the bottles, Abe explains, is “from a more traditional African point of view. Bottles also signify conjuring and capturing spiritual entities. You can see the bottles hanging from the Neem tree as holding the answer to what lies beyond the known world.” This work reflected on the difficulties women can face when being forced to find a balance between traditional and modern understandings of what it means to be a women, while searching for their own definition of womanhood.
Strange Fruit Konyagi
Due to the fact that most of her works are displayed in public spaces, this forces both men and women to be confronted by gender misconceptions and the oppression of women in her community.
Check out Abe’s website to look through more of her work.
In an email conversation with creatives Mziyanda Malgas and Daniel Walton, they explained to me that Cape Town is often viewed from the outside as a city which is open and accepting of everyone, particularly those who have a creative inclination. However, when looking at the city through the eyes of young queer people living in Cape Town, there is an entire layer that the two of them, along with other queer people, unfortunately experience. “Being feminine guys, Daniel and I have been targets for many years of our lives, and within this past year we have felt it more than ever. We endure catcalling from men in the streets almost on the daily. We have encountered homophobic attacks in clubs and even had an instance where we were modeling outside and three Afrikaans men walked past us and spat on the floor in disgust,” Mziyanda explains.
Daniel and Mziyanda expressed the pain that this causes them. They have been a supportive of each other under the circumstances, and decided to fight back using their creative capacities. In April they were courageous enough to go back to some of the places where they have been harassed and photograph themselves in these spaces. For them, the importance of occupying and reclaiming these spaces through the medium that speaks to their creative spirits has brought a sense of empowerment. From alleyways, to bars, bathrooms and streets in town, they have replaced the haunting memories of aggressive words and probing hands with a positive energy they hope will seep into the walls of city. I interviewed the two of them to find out more about their experiences and their photographic project.
How do you envision and enact your own understanding of “empowerment”?
MM: I envision empowerment as a way in which you give people the strength and courage to truly be themselves and express themselves. I enact my empowerment in my everyday life, or at least try to, by staying true to myself and who I am.. By trying to increase another person’s state of being, be it through my Instagram stories or just meeting people while out.
DW: Queerness is difference. I can’t speak for everyone. Personally, it’s expressing [my] difference from the cishet normative narrative. I enact my queerness by creating art, the way I present myself and dancing in clubs. Here I perform my queerness. I empower myself by creating art, reacting to my experiences and my own identity. Hanging out with Mziyanda empowers me. When we are together I feel a sense of power between us. I don’t resonate with being called a “man” as I feel it carries so many things that I don’t relate with. But, reclaiming space is very important to me. I feel so often, we are made to feel uncomfortable in spaces or we are showed that we are really unwelcome. Reclaiming spaces also makes cishet people confront their discomfort towards who we are. Therefore, I wanted to reclaim these spaces that people don’t see as ours and make them our own.
Taking over space or reclaiming space comes across as an important foundation for the images. Share a bit about how this importance resonates with your experience as queer identifying people?
MM: Men have always been dominant figures in society. So essentially with being queer men, the space is not ours but rather theirs. So with the project that Daniel and I did, we wanted to reclaim the space and go back to the spots where we felt extremely vulnerable, uncomfortable and often scared and take pictures there to show that “yes, we might have previously felt afraid to be here but no, we are no longer giving anyone that much power over us”. These pictures are not about to end homophobia and sexual harassment but for us, it really was a big turning point and moment in realizing that as queer men, we do not have to accept the harsh reality that comes with being who we are but rather take power in it. Funnily enough, yesterday was my birthday and a couple of friends and I went clubbing and had a blast. This morning I had a discussion with Daniel over the realization that whenever we go out, we always seem to take over and ‘queer out’ the space in that we make it our own. This club was the same one in which Daniel got attacked for being gay, so to come back and vogue all over the dancefloor as Britney Spears played was our tiny bit in reclaiming the space!
DW: This project on my sexual harassers came about when I was given a documentary project at college. I really, really wanted to document my harassers, because I had told so many people my stories but they would never believe me or they would think I’m joking. I also wanted to create something for women and queer people. We are always told that it’s just a part of our life. It’s not okay, it’s not normal and I’m tired of dealing with this on a daily basis. This subject is so often spoken about amongst ourselves, but our voices are never heard or taken seriously. Therefore, I created this project. I took photos around town, of each of the men that harassed me. I captioned each of my images with the quote of what they said to me.
But these images, are something for women and queer people to know that they are brave, they are beautiful and they shouldn’t feel ashamed. We need to flourish and hold our heads up high, even though it’s really tough, it’s what we need to do.
I’m hoping that people know that I don’t let these hurtful memories get to me. If I let these experiences upset me, then I have let them won. I have moved on, I’ve conquered the space. And we can all conquer it. I am strong and I will continue to stay strong and fierce for myself and for all my queer brothers and sisters.
Daniel, please share a bit about your creative and conceptual preparations for your Polaroid series? How do these connect with the larger project?
DW: This project was inspired by all my experiences combined together. Recently I had an experience at the club Fiction (this was quite a few months after my project though) and I got lemon thrown at me by these two guys. I turned around, frowned and opened the door to go back into the dance area. Out of nowhere, from behind, this man grabbed my arm and my body and threw me to the ground and told me to “get out” and was called me a, “fucking poes.” He then proceeded to say, “This is a straight club, not a fucking gay club.” This experience inspired me a bit for a new project I’m doing at the moment. These experiences are frightening, but they inspire me to create work from them. I want all the queer children to know that you can stand up for yourself and you can create art from this. DON’T LET THESE BASICS RUIN YOU! You are beautiful and you are you. [The captions for the Polaroid photographs are the words these men said to Daniel while on the streets.]
‘What happens if I stick my tongue down your throat’ Photograph by Daniel Walton‘Hey babe, hey boo’ Photograph by Daniel Walton
Please share more of the stories that inspired this project?
MM: These projects have been inspired by instances that have happened over the span of many years of our lives. Catcalling has always been something that I have experienced. From a young age, I never hid how I acted and it was never a facade that I put up, so I think it was very easy for people to pick on me and comment on certain traits about myself, such as how I spoke, walked and just the way I would react to situations. Over the years and with growing up, I have found the words thrown at me to have become more vulgar and in my opinion stupid! Telling me you think I’m sexy and that you want to make me your girlfriend is supposed to what, swoon me? Grow up!
Visual artist Limb (Tamzyn Botha) started building installations for music festivals when she was 19. “Music being my main source of inspiration, but over time (as I am untrained) I have thrown myself into situations where I have forced the evolution of my craft,” she explains. Over the years she has slowly been leaning towards a kitsch aesthetic and is now more comfortable with exploring that side of herself. She is devoted to being as honest and sincere as she can be without having to directly spell things out for her audience, and the positive feedback she has received is a recognition of this direction.
In her solo exhibition titled Of we see the kitsch aesthetic used to explore the unconscious development of the ego through the “portrayal of textural guises” representing blood, bone, skin and hair. I had an interview with Limb to find out about her artistic practice and to get an understanding of the creative process involved in putting Of together.
‘Glimpse of Gore’
Share a bit about Limb. Do you take on a particular persona as Limb?
Limb is really a space in which I can be indulgent, and the persona of Limb dresses that way, expresses that way and (hopefully) lives that way.
Your artist bio states that Limb is “a visual artist whose work indulges play through video, costume, performance in the realms of DIY” – could you please unpack what this means and how this came to be the way you chose to make this what makes up the work you produce?
The mediums of video and stills are a way in which I can capture the things I make, I will always feel most comfortable using my hands. Tactile creations, things I can feel/mold and play with. DIY is truly just my way of saying collecting, merging and transforming found objects – breathing new life and personality into them (and justifying my hoarding).
‘H’
Share with our readers how you came up with the name of your exhibition, Of ?
‘Of’, used to express the origin or part – really just sums up my experience and expression of it. The people and environments that make up my reality and play such intensive roles in shaping my existence and the way in which I consume/release.
‘Spoeks’
Can you please share the inspiration to explore the development of the ego? How did you decide to explore this through blood, bone, skin and hair?
Blood, bone, skin and hair – the biological development of a human – is something we all naturally can grasp. I wanted to use something laymen, for people to take on the subject matter on a surface level – and within that try to sincerely explore my own ego. The unconscious development of ego are the circumstances and experiences we aren’t necessarily aware of, the peripheral components molding us that are almost unseen. Being aware of that, exploring those shadows.
‘at Vandene, when she swopped heads’
The video is divided into these four elements. Could you please share your thinking and creative process with regards to conceptualizing and putting together each segment of the video?
I wanted to portray Of Blood in a very bubblegum/pop sentiment – as not to make it gruesome but rather very femme and fabulous. Although glossy and rather psychedelic, this is where the ego begins her radical transformation. Sex and addiction riddled in pink blood. The shrine is filled with glitter dicks, hairy vaginas, pink dragons and kitsch ornaments I have collected over time. Indulgently a shrine to me/of me.
Of Bone was my very personal depiction of a sort of ancestral homage, almost a camouflage of feeling with the performance melting into the background. The “H” is a message to the world and to a collarbone lover. The scene is gold, like a pedestal of desire and value.
Of Skin was my most personal, a twisted notion of laying to bed the previous “me” – polarimpala. The head of a polar bear and distorted body of an impala. I separated this character based on my first experience with race that I am aware of. At about 8 years old, we were living a scrummy apartment at the bottom of Southernwood in East London. A kid downstairs who I’d occasionally play with, made quite an impact. Her father was Nigerian and mother – a white South African. I took my barbie down to play, and she removed my white barbie head and replaced it with her black barbie doll head. That memory is vivid.
Of Hair, my final scene – the sort of “money shot” really employs the idea of the alter ego. The Isibheqe text is a message for the creator of the writing system. No set, but rather shadows of texture and the ego – and the emphasis on eventuality.
The Ego was my sculpture, and is present in each scene of the video – as she develops.
‘Skin of skin’‘Alter’‘Flossy’
Check out the video below of Limb’s improvised performance in the Blood and Hair characters taken at the opening of ‘Limb presents Of’.
