With a background in architecture, and a general interest in art and design since his younger years, Kadara Enyeasi moved towards a photography practice that includes portraiture, art and fashion. This self-taught photographer plays with structure and perspective, often making the urban environment a key component in how he positions those who appear in his photographs.
From discovering photography in junior high when his father gave him a camera, he began by photographing friends and family. He then moved on to experiment with self-portraiture, specifically between 2010 and 2014. This work involves a personal examination of the human form and mind, as well as demonstrates his technical skill and creative execution.
Reflecting on this Kadara explains in an interview with Nataal that, “At first I was interested in using it to see myself, and how I interacted with the world. I’d adopt various poses that I might subconsciously exhibit in public, whether to appear flamboyant or a recluse. It was about trying to understand myself and why I am how I am. Most of the work from this period, 2010-2014, I called ‘Human Encounters’, and then I broke that down into smaller studies.” Although there may not be a central idea in all of his work, there is a central subject which he explores in different contexts and from different angles – the Black male body. His images channel thoughts and personal interrogations around body politics and representation, while using moods and emotions to soften the poses of the people he photographs.
Recently Kadara has been doing more social documentary work and looks at how people interact with urban living and country life in various parts of Nigeria, particularly Lagos and Kaduna. He has also started experimenting with collage work, enjoying the process of contrasting images, and combing them to create a completely new one.
“I think it’s high time we start to address that dance, movement and embodied politics all form part of re-imagining and re-defining where, how and why bodies can occupy space.”
This quote is from an interview with co-founder of ANY BODY ZINE (ABZ), Nicola van Straaten. She, along with Kopano Maroga and Julia de Rosenwerth, started the online and print publication with the desire to bring more cultural and social attention to artistic work that is rooted in the body, “but also a desire to expand ideas around what kind of bodies are dancing bodies.” The intention is to emphasize that every body is a potential site for “creative self-actualization” and “open understandings of dance”.
Having met during their time at the then UCT School of Dance, Nicola proposed the idea of the publication to Kopano and Julia. Since then they have released 10 issues, all dealing with varied aspects of dance, choreography, movement, and bodies through written contributions and interviews with people from different aspects of their industry. Every issue has a central theme that offers guidance to contributors, and a direction for the curation of each issue. Kopnano explains that the themes are based on their interests at different moments, making each issue a reflection a way of thinking at a particular moment in time. Volume 2, comprised of four issues so far, is focused on verbs that relate to dance and movement – Marching, Falling, Jumping and Hanging. Nicola explains that they chose verbs because they were interested in the intersection between language and movement, action and motion.
Previous issues from Volume 1 have included conversations about semantics, emotions, body politics and taboo subjects, offering a wide variety of entry points for conversations. The issue titled “Space/Place” tackles the semantic and political differences invoked in the use of “space” versus “place”, and connects to the act of curation and place making. The issue, “Rhythm” looks at sound and music makers within their community, and includes features on the Phillipi Music Project, a computer engineered rhythm making program by Mohato Lekena and performer and musician Coila-Leah Enderstein who features a lot in their issues, and who Kopano describes as a “kind of ad hoc, fourth member of ABZ”. The issue, “Sex”, arose from an interest in interrogating perceptions of the naked body in performance, specifically how it is always read through sexual references even when the intention of a performance has nothing to do with this. Other issues have explored topics such as race, colour, subjectivity, objectivity, the personal and the political.
“There are so few opportunities for people to share their creative work that isn’t easily consumable or sellable, which I think is why folks are always really keen to contribute,” Kopano explains while reflecting on how they ask people in their community to contribute to the publication. The publication is also a platform to bolster the profile of practitioners who are a large part of the growth and development of dance and movement and related practices in Southern Africa. They have conducted interviews with dancer and choreographer Rudi Smit, strange and intellectual performance artist Gavin Krastin and filmmaker Jenna Bass just to mention a few.
Julia, Kopano and Nicola each contribute in different and important ways to the project. “Julia’s incredible choreographic eye for detail (and the fact that she basically taught herself web design) make her the boss of the website. Kopano’s amazing relational qualities and ability to hold spaces have resulted in him doing a lot of the liasioning with our contributors, stockists and general public, lately he’s also been directing the kind of ‘business’ development of the zine. And my passion for books and print mean I head up the layout and printing aspect of the work. We all edit together, make decisions together, essentially ‘lead’ the project together,” Nicola explains.
Connected to the online and print publication is the third wing of ABZ, the performative platforms. ANY BODY ZINE has collaborated with NEW DANCE LAB, to create the ANY BODY DANCE LAB – a 6 week dance and performance residency for Cape Town-based artists. Teaming up with Theatre Arts Admin Collective and the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, the residency comprises of a series of dance, composition, writing and performance workshops that culminate in a series of public performances by the 10 participants on the residency. The content from the writing workshops will be compiled to form a publication produced by ANY BODY ZINE. “We wanted to include a writing component to the ANY BODY DANCE LAB and thought that it would be very special if we curated a publication to contextualise and archive the project, but that also provides a platform for the residents to publish some of their work. As ANY BODY ZINE, we are also interested in the processes of content creation and saw this as a good opportunity to explore that question further,” Julia explains. What connects all three aspects of their work is the desire to make space for and to support independent artists.
Julia also informed me that after a fantastic Thundafund Campaign [Thundafund is a crowdfunding platform in South Africa], they were able to print their 2016 and 2017 content which will be available at the Book Lounge in Cape Town on Roeland street and Bibliophilia in Woodstock. ANY BODY ZINE will also be available for purchase at the Association for Visual Arts (35 Church street, Cape Town) during their Comics Focus zine and comics festival taking place from the 21st of June to the 19th of July.
Reflecting on their intentions for the publication, Nicola expressed that they hope it will allow people to think about their bodies differently and perhaps see dance as a more accessible medium. The publication presents itself as an archive of South African performance and movement practices, showcasing an image of the contemporary history of dance and beginning the documentation of SA’s dance lineage. The platform also offers validation for those already deeply involved in the industry and the possibility for opportunities for emerging artists.
Check out their website to find out more about their upcoming projects.
“In our current neoliberal context, dance really doesn’t get as much support as fine art or even film, because it isn’t necessarily a ‘sellable’ product. But that’s also why it’s such a powerful tool, because dance is an experience and has the potential to be internally transformative in that way.” – Nicola van Straaten
2016’s Vol 1 content (Photo by Nicola van Straaten)
FAKA, the duo made up of Desire Marea and Fela Gucci explores a combination of mediums including sound, performance, video and photography. These are the tools they use to unpack themes central to their own experiences, resulting in the construction of a low-fi, eclectic aesthetic that communicates the liberation and reimagination of queer bodies.
Their collective name FAKA is descriptive of the impact of their work. Their presence is not a faint permeation or seeping into the consciousness of audiences. Instead, it is a direct insertion into ones frame of reference.
Inviting audiences into their ritualistic, celebratory performances with seductive looks and welcoming hand gestures, their aim is to humanise all faces whose presence signify underrepresented realities. Their work moves beyond that of a performance duo, and shifts into the realm of a cultural movement. Their existence lives beyond gallery spaces and stages, penetrating coded environments with their online presence through sound, video and social media. FAKA have created their own hybridised language to express intersectional body politics. Their work engenders the creation of safe spaces for black, queer, gender non-conforming or trans people to reflect on their own experiences and grow in community.
As a duo FAKA commemorates and contributes to “third world aesthetics”, making a demand for this to receive large scale validation in local and international creative cultures. European audiences, and more recently Australian audiences, have been drawn to their ancestral gqom sounds as well as the unapologetic lyrical and performative transmission of their own stories and that of Black Queer Culture in South Africa.
Disrupting cis-heteronormative notions of existence, their work is an amalgamation of music and art, collapsing the idea that artists need to focus on and be recognized within one specific discipline.
Their collective manifesto can be summarised by words from a Facebook post about their 2016 song ‘Isifundo Sokuqala’ – “Izitabane zaziwe ukuthi zibuya ebukhosini”(Let it be known, that queerness is a thing of the Gods), paired with the statement that the song is an “ode to all the powerful dolls who risk their lives every day by being visible in an unsafe world. This is a celebration of those who have fearlessly embraced themselves. Because when your identity is the cause of your suffering in the world, you begin to fear the very source of your greatness in the world.”
Łukasz Horbów is a 22 year-old performer and multidisciplinary artist from Poland. His works, which can be accessed through his tumblr blog, are an exploration of his own body. He begins with pictures of his own body, taking grainy, black and white photos into which he cuts and draws, also using the photographs as objects themselves which can be moved around and reassembled as a form of collage. He defines his project as an attempt to form a “harmonious whole.”
The question at the centre of this work is whether this is merely a formal device to create pretty pictures with body parts, or whether there is a critical value to this mode of practice. With the body being a central theme in art through the ages, in contemporary art it is specifically contested, particularly in the realms of representations of bodies by artists. This then plays into the socio-political realms where questions around bodies being policed by others and notions of beauty have an impact on the values and prejudices that a society holds. Despite the body being a highly contested issue, and perhaps because of that, contemporary artists continue to engage with this. However navigating these tricky terrains means that one has to create strategies for dealing with the various issues that arise as a result. In Horbów’s work for example, a strategy at play is to use his own body in addressing these issues.
Speaking on his choice to do so, he says, “I refer to my body as something alien, not harmonious with me. I don’t create unity with him, but instead treat my body in my works and in life as a tool, a medium by which I can create something.” Perhaps there is a desire for transcendence at play as well, a desire to surpass the limits of humanness, something that has plagued humans since the beginning. To this end Horbów expresses that his desire is “to find things / forms that I had not previously been able to give and that my body did not have before.”
Whilst this strategy may allow him to enter into the realm of body politics in contemporary art, a new challenge arises; that of the private versus the personal. By these terms I mean the private to mean that which is relational only to you, and the personal to mean that which can be related to by others. Therefore, the challenge facing Horbów’s work is whether his notions of the body, and of a “harmonious whole,” can be shared and explored by others in a way that they can relate to.
