Tag: non binary

  • Thinking about de-gendering as a route to personhood

    Thinking about de-gendering as a route to personhood

    So the first time I encountered the term ‘cisgender’ was on my colourful Twitter timeline. Some troll was ignorantly spewing his privilege and a beautiful bisexual boy that I follow called the troll a “cisgender straight white male” while telling him to take several seats.

    After tediously Googling the term, I was informed that being “cisgender” means that your gender identity matches the sex that you were assigned at birth. So basically when you were born your physical attributes, which are anatomically and physiologically predetermined, and your internal conviction that you are either male or female, plus the cultural behavioural expressions of those convictions, all marry each other harmoniously.

    When the beautiful bisexual boy was calling out that troll, “cisgender” sounded like a swear word because how could one body have so much hegemonic power, such unadulterated privilege. It seemed obscene until I realised I am cisgender and confronting this privilege was bewildering since other components that make up my identity, such as race, nationality, sex and sexuality are not necessarily hegemonic.

    Initially, I was confronted by my cisgender privilege a couple of years ago when I approached a public restroom that did not have the universal male or female signage. Instead the figure on the door was just a person, which I certainly am, but this privilege of fitting comfortably at one end of the sex/gender binary made me question if I even belonged in that gender neutral space because hello hi, the entire world has created public restrooms, and every other space, on the dominant societal  assumption that everyone is cisgender. This prolonged perpetuation of the sex/gender binary has caused for the maintenance of gender inequality. As a human being dedicated to the decolonisation of my mind, walk through this with me as I unpack how de-gendering is crucial to decolonisation (decolonisation in this context being the undoing of hegemonic “norms” and mindsets.)

    Firstly, let’s get this one thing clear, “nature” does not dictate how we perform gender, instead we do as producers of our culture. The assignment of sex at birth is based on our understanding of gender identity. So girls have uteruses and boys have penises. This basic arrangement of gender and other various subtle and overt arrangements of gender are reproduced socially by power structures in order to shape individual action, and because of the histories of the powers that be, these arrangements appear solid.  Therefore it is dominant ideologies that perpetuate the sex/gender binary in order to maintain power dynamics.

    I believe that if we started with discarding sex assignment at birth as a “regulatory practice” that “institutes the production of discrete and asymmetrical oppositions between ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’, where these are understood as expressive attributes of ‘male’ and ‘female’” then we could ultimately de-gender society and “true humanism” could be realised and instituted (Judith Butler). Being freed from these shackles of the sex/gender binary allows individuals to step into a personhood that is not regulated by hegemonic norms or socially prescribed ways of being and interaction.

    However, this immediate route to de-gendering is essentialist. We are still part of a world that has “norms” and ideals that are deeply interwoven into our social fabric. For example, the social construction of the female body and the normalisation of the male body has considered the female body as “the other”. This othering of the female body is based on anatomy and physiology and this othering also seeps into the subjugation of a feminine expression of gender. Femininity is still assumed to be debilitating. People with female bodies and whose gender expression is feminine are victims of oppression. Hence histories that reflects the need to implement equality constitutionally, institutionally and domestically.

    So before we can de-gender, I believe we need to de-cisgender first. There are and always have been and there still will be many more individuals who are non-binary, transgender and queer. Forget my privileged gender neutral experience, there are people who wake up every day compromising how they navigate their existence because of this idea that there are only two sexes and their manifestation should either be masculine or feminine depending on their body. I believe that once cisnormativity and its partner in crime, heteronormativity, are overthrown from our mindsets and understanding of bodies and sexuality, then surely the superiority of the male body and masculine expression would collapse?

    It is important to realise that the crux of our minor differences are what these dominant ideologies that perpetuate oppression are built on. It is about damn time that we interrogate this social construct and unlearn how we have been taught to prescribe ideas onto our bodies as well other people’s bodies.

    Only once the intricate hierarchies involved in our understanding of gender are undone then we can move into the dismantling phase of the entire construct: no body will be categorised and no personhood presumed in accordance. Essentially, people could simply be people.

  • Faggotry (Embodied) // activating queer spaces with multidisciplinary artist Elijah Ndoumbé

    Faggotry (Embodied) // activating queer spaces with multidisciplinary artist Elijah Ndoumbé

    Summing up everything that Elijah Ndoumbé encompasses is no easy task. The magnitude of their brilliance is enthralling and their approach is delicately interrogatory and essentially decolonial. Calling Elijah an artist is a fitting label but really Elijah is gifted & accountable to the need of expressing themselves and members of their community through various channels.

    Born to a French father with Cameroonian roots, Elijah’s father was considered métis in the country where Elijah was born and initially racialised, Paris, France. The term métis suggests “racial impurity” due to being part European and part African, Africa being considered inferior. There was no conversation about Elijah’s father’s Blackness. The only time Elijah would indulge in their ancestry would be through the traditional meals their Cameroonian grandmother prepared. Elijah later moved to the West coast of America, where Elijah’s white mother is from.

    PXSSY PALACE ST. GEORG [Munroe and Nadine] (Point n Shoot | Berlin, Germany | 2017) by Elijah Ndoumbé
    Elijah’s ballet classes in suburban America subtly posed questions about their race and gender. Ballet class was filled with slender, white girls with perfectly arched feet and Elijah had a more prominent ass, darker skin and flat feet.

    “The thing about ballet is that it is a form of dance that relies on a particular and biased body type…this experience of art was very fucking gendered and very racialised and I didn’t realise it at the time because of the context of the space that I was raised in…I don’t want to be the only weirdo in the room, I want to feel seen. When you feel desperately isolated and alone because you know something is different about you and there is shame attached to that, like throughout my childhood, there was shame attached to the desire I have and the ways in which it would show up in my life or the ways I would respond.”

    U DON’T EVEN KNOW ME, captures of @zengaking & @ma_tayo (1) from larger series (120mm | Berlin, Germany | 2017) by Elijah Ndoumbé

    Elijah’s becoming was profoundly jolted during their time at Stanford University where they were “severely politicised.” Studying “Power” and “History” within the context of their bachelors in African & African American Studies and Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies intensely informed Elijah about the dynamics of the violent histories that riddle their body, their family’s bodies, and the bodies of members of their community. Subsequently, this questioning of embodiment has nuanced Elijah’s work. “It’s actually quite a decolonial way of thinking – to burst out of the frameworks and to imagine what it looks like for us to build our own while simultaneously infiltrating the ones that exist…I’m a non-binary trans person, who has body dysphoria, also regardless of my complexion, I’m also Black, I’m a person of colour, I’m of African decent; I carry these things in the end. I carry a multitude of things and those things are going to show up in all spaces.”

    Untitled [A Kween, Ascends] (120mm | Cape Town, South Africa | 2017) | Credits: Shot by Thandie Gula-Ndebele and Nazlee Arbee
    Creative Direction and Styling by Elijah Ndoumbé, Nazlee Arbee, and Thandie Gula-Ndebele
    Makeup by Thandie Gula-Ndebele
    Assist by Tandee Mkize
    Initially through the pen, Elijah struggled with this questioning in the form of written pieces that require prolonged simmering in love and care. Elijah was then captivated by expressing themselves through a camera lens and with inspiration and guidance from BBZ London based cultural consultant and video artist, Nadine Davis, Elijah began poetically capturing themselves and members of their community through photography and videography in various personal and global contexts.

    Now based in Cape Town, South Africa, Elijah has captured the emotionally intense experiences of Trans womxn who experience a lot of casual violence, through their work with the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) in a video called SISTAAZHOOD: Conversations on Violence. There are also a couple of photoseries’ accessible on Elijah’s website. The prominence of visual work attributes to the attention paid to this creative outlet but there are infinite ways for Elijah to exist.

    Danyele, a muse (120mm | Palo Alto, California, USA | 2017) by Elijah Ndoumbé

    More recently, Elijah has had the privilege of “doing the work of making space to think”, this time has been an incubation period, in which Elijah has played with other mediums. For example humbly picking up a pen to doodle with some Miles Davis in the background and a “fuck it” mentality. Elijah’s exploration of themselves as an illustrator stems from their desire to be free from operating in fear, especially through a medium that will potentially fuel their other creative expressions. Furthermore, Elijah wishes to deconstruct the notion that only formal training like “art school” certifies one as an “artist” and the labelling of their creation’s as “art”.

    Elijah has also been gravitating to the creative medium they first formally explored, dance. Complimentary to these embodied movements  that resemble freedom and release are Elijah’s well versed music mixes, which could blare through the speakers of events like the Queer Salon. Created by Elijah and facilitated with a Black & Brown Queer DJ duo, Nodiggity, the Queer Salon makes space for Queer, Trans and non-binary Black, Brown and indigenous people of colour to be prioritised through art. While lamenting with me over experiences on dancefloors in Berlin and public restroom lines in Johannesburg, Elijah accentuated their urgency to continue building and facilitating safe and sustainable community spaces.

    Elijah’s current phase of rest has revealed a beauty of the unknown to them and reinforced that despite daily negotiation of their textured identity, their artistry will always be an unyielding, irrefutable and indispensable embodiment of them and theirs.

    Catherine, portrait of (120mm | Palo Alto, California, USA | 2017) by Elijah Ndoumbé
    Express. (Point n Shoot | Cape Town, South Africa | 2017) by Elijah Ndoumbé
    Habibiatch (Point n Shoot | Berlin, Germany | 2017) by Elijah Ndoumbé
    Portrait of the Artist in Their Home Studio (120mm b&w | Cape Town, South Africa | 2018) by Thandie Gula-Ndebele
    Eli Ndoumbé live at Yours Truly (Digital | Cape Town, South Africa | 2018) by Thandie Gula-Ndebele
  • Gypsy Sport: A rising leader of consciousness in fashion

    Having showcased in major fashion capitals such as New York, Paris and Milan, Gypsy Sport has proven to be insurgent in disrupting the elite fashion scene with its honest and progressive social commentary. The New York-based urban street wear label founded in 2012 by Rio Uribe is inspired by the ideals of inclusivity, true diversity and community.

    It Is almost impossible to divorce the socio-political statements that Gypsy Sport makes from its garments. The authentic and soulful label offers gender-fluid, non-binary clothing that incorporates highly creative silhouettes as well as eclectic textiles and prints. Gypsy Sport takes a pan-ethnic approach to fashion in which their clothing is derived from a mash up of various cultural influences whilst managing to absolve themselves from cultural appropriation.

    Another refreshing aspect from the label is the demographic of models that are featured in their runway shows and global campaigns. With the emergence of Gypsy Sport, Uribe began scouting for models within his community and group of friends which resulted in vibrant shows and photoshoots. The label which also champions for body positivity has since become a beacon of representation for marginalized groups such as black folk, brown folk, trans folk, queer folk and Muslim folk.

    The multidimensional and layered nature of the label has equipped it with the ability to manoeuvre itself through different creative and political spaces. Their musical ventures include a mixtape in collaboration with New York-based DJ Anthony Dicap which was released for the label’s Fall 2017 collection. Gypsy Sport was also thoroughly involved in 2017’s LGBTQ celebrations by volunteering at LGBTQ youth centres across four cities, namely Los Angeles, New York, Portland and San Francisco. The Pride celebrations comprised of a trans march advocating for transgender and non-binary rights, queer parties, clothing drives and pop-up shops in which all proceeds were donated towards youth community development.

    Gypsy Sport recognizes the great significance in positively impacting the community and has a deep-rooted understanding that it can be achieved through multiple channels. Their passion for the community is evident in their casting calls with the most recent one being open to whole families and seeking for artists, dancers, singers, activists, athletes and geeks to model the label’s clothing at New York Fashion Week.

    It’s quite fitting that Gypsy Sport identifies as rebels because that is exactly what they are – they defy the status quo, triumphantly dismantle binaries, challenge various fronts of injustices and essentially disrupt stagnant spaces. They manage to do all of that whilst setting the bar high with their fashion forward brand. 2018 will be an exciting year to see how this dynamic and intentional label will continue to stretch limitations in the fashion industry to expand Uribe’s vision in creating a worldwide fashion tribe.

  • Gabrielle Goliath’s ELEGY // a deadly sonic experience

    I am certain that it is impossible to shake off visual artist, Gabrielle Goliath’s, ELEGY performance. It has been weeks since I was part of the audience and I am still haunted by the memory.

    The chatty room fell dead quiet as the seven operatic female singers dressed in all black walked in single file towards the almost cubic stage.

    The first singer in line stepped onto the stage and began to sing the single note that was passed on to the next singer as she stepped off and the other stepped on.

    The B natural note that was sustained throughout the hour-long performance resembled wailing.

    As the performance taxingly progressed a singer would silently leave the line and stand to form a circle around the audience until only one singer remained.

    Once the remaining singer joined the circle, they collectively exited the room.

    Just like that we partook in the ritual of mourning that had been enacted by the seven black operatic singers.

    Sobs now added to the soul-stirring silence.

    The presence of the absent individual was hefty.The absent individual being a dead black girl, a dead black girl whose subjectivities were fundamentally violated and consigned her to a generic, all-encompassing victimhood.

    Goliath’s ELEGY ceremoniously takes this form. The life of a South African woman, trans or non-binary, that was raped and killed is commemorated. At the performance that I attended at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre in collaboration with the Goodman Gallery, we commemorated the life of Karabo Mokoena, a young black woman who was murdered by her former lover.

    ELEGY like most of Goliath’s topics is loaded. Goliath grapples with the problematic of the representation of violence, pain, suffering, trauma and the narrative of others and of another. There is a profound delicateness in Goliath’s imaging, sounding and writing about these sensitive topics. Goliath strategically works around the violence to create the affective impact her audiences are left with.

    Through ELEGY Goliath created a moment where loss became a site for community and empathetic cross-cultural and cross-national encounters. During the Q&A after the performance, the audience was evidently distressed because the performance did not provide a means of catharsis, which was deliberate. Goliath made us personalise a traumatised black body instead of routinely objectifying it.  A distinct decolonial and intersectional space is created during ELEGY, which presents mourning as a social and productive work. ELEGY gives to those who have not been given a moment and plagues us with the irresolution of gender based violence.

  • Ib Kamara’s portraits of Black possibility

    I met Ib Kamara on a hot morning. I was still in my post Saturday jol-haze when I introduced myself to the stylist who I had previously only known from his portraits.  Like apparitions from the digital spheres leaping straight out of his Instagram, I would see him and his team, returning from their morning shoot to pick me up to do the interview.

    Squeezed between 3 slender stoic young men, one in a ladies hat which was fitting considering all the Sunday services happening around us. Sitting between them at the back of the car was like being perched within his Instagram posts. I got to rub shoulders with the artist and his team. I got to meet the digital deities in the flesh.

    By looking at his work one can already see a creative dialogue happening between him and South African art collective FAKA  whose images blur the simple divide between the masculine and feminine. He tells me that he’s good friends with and has collaborated with them. They suggested that he come to Johannesburg. From his Instagram page alone one already sees a shared experience, a collective whose quest is to shape how we reconstruct ourselves and how we want to be seen as people from the African continent.

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    Ib Kamara can best be described as an artist whose medium is the body. His work as a stylist has garnered him well deserved praise because of his ability to re-politicize a career that can too easily be dismissed as frivolous and obsessed with the outward appearance. Through clothing he is able to examine what it means to be black, a man, deconstructing our notions that there are singular notions of such.

    Yet before Ib began his career in the creative arts he had studied the sciences with the intention of becoming a doctor. “I was very much into the experiments and had I continued I would have probably become a researcher.”. His parents had encouraged him to enter into the sciences but he wasn’t happy with this choice. “I wanted to be a creative”.

    He would then leave university and study art. Yet his love of experimentation would continue into his passion for art. Coming from sciences which is centred on the body, he would continue this focus through styling.

    52C4CCD9-9C20-41A8-AB7F-66C58039BEA8“I look at people a lot. I look at how people look. How they hold themselves. It could be two guys on the road, leaning. That’s how I draw inspiration. I’m constantly sketching and do my research by reading a lot, but my main source is from ‘the everyday’. It is here that everything rushes to you all at once.”

    For him South Africans go the extra mile when they dress, just like the rest of Africa and her diaspora. He talks about his recent travels to Freetown, Sierra Leone where he was born. Ib would stop people and tell them they are amazing. “For them it’s just every day but for me it’s fucking amazing”.

    “Style is attitude, character, it’s who you want to be.” He works by first looking at his model’s style, and then looks at his model’s the clothes. For him style goes beyond the clothes. “It is a man smoking his cigar. It means living with your own world.”

    Ib interned with the legendary stylist and model Barry Kamen, who became a major influence on his work and his mentor.

    “I would watch Barry when he picked up his cup with his rings.  He embodies a stylish person.  He had so much detail in everything he did, even in the lining of his pants. He was a Father figure to me. He was the greatest living stylist of the time. He was such a humble person in the world yet he brought such grace and art to style.”

    It was through Barry that Ib learned to style the human body.  His personal style is laid back and minimal unlike his mentor. For him however it’s the essence not the amount you put on.

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    “Styling is performance as a moving image. It’s a moving art piece that’s constantly adapting.”

    His Instagram page reflects this spirit. “There is an energy I want to portray here where anything goes. I want to push ideas that I was afraid to do as a child. Most kids grow up and loose their fantasies. I continue the fantasy through my Instagram feed. Here I am talking with myself about my ideas and fantasies.  This is what I want to portray, a ‘boy on a guy on a bike with his butt out’.

    His Instagram page shows the image of the care free black man who embraces the feminine. This heroine is not afraid to embrace a masculinity on his own terms. At times unafraid to be sexy for the camera, with sensual shots in stockings, silk gloves and unafraid to let his pants fall to reveal his love of lace panties.

    This is a man who is also not afraid to be vulnerable. His nakedness is not a symptom of his lack of clothes but in how the viewer is being allowed access to a private self.  This self is one in which he decides how he shall be seen by others.  He rejects the standards of how black men are supposed to be seen as the direct opposite to the female form. For him such boundaries do not exist within his own imagination.

    “These are the characters in my head that I wasn’t allowed to be. Always being told to be a man, I wanted to push and change ideas of how a black man should be, which for me is problematic. I’m against a single narrative on how black people should behave and look. These were never were my things.”

    With his portraits he gives a platform to bodies whose existence are ignored in the every day. His Instagram is a platform of what is possible. Where form can follow fantasy.

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  • Angel Ho- Energy Without Restraint

    In the comic book series The Wicked + The Divine (written by Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Jamie McKelvie) ancient gods return to Earth in the form of modern pop stars. The series wittily bases its super beings on real life icons. Lucifer is a riff on David Bowie, Odin is essentially a member of Daft Punk and so on. The story shows the extent to which the contemporary consciousness is stalked by the fame machine. In the same way that our ancestors projected their hopes, desires and fears onto mythological beings, we worship at the altar of sound and vision.  Look at how Michael Jackson and Prince have effectively being deified in death. Under the screens of daily life lies a harsher and brighter world of wild emotion and uncontrollable dreams.

    South African musician Angel-Ho is an artist who profoundly understands this collective cultural unconscious, and how to manipulate it for their own ends. Through their recordings, image and performances they conduct the iconography of pop into transgressive realms. A key example is the blistering ‘ I Don’t Want Your Man’, a mutation of  a Keyisha Cole sample into the national anthem of  dread post-human robot empire.

    The Cape Town based producer has become an acclaimed global underground figure over the last year. With their brutal music and assertive non-binary queer image, Angelo Valerio was identified by many publications as making the perfect soundtrack to the tumult of Rhodes and Fees Must Fall. Their musical output is combined with intense live performances. Dancing on glass and a carefree attitude toward pyrotechnics. They is also a founder of the NON Collective, one of most visionary, intense electronic labels out there. NON has also been blowing up this year, with one of their most recent releases being his spiritual allies FAKA’s mind expanding Bottoms Revenge. They share personal visions of glamorous extremism- glitter and tinnitus, gold paint and bloody wounds.

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    Angelo’s first brush with musical glory occurred at the Manenburg Jazz Club when they was a little kid- ” little did I know the song I loved the most ‘ I love you Daddy’ was going to be performed live by Ricardo Gronewald himself. So he called me on stage, and I had stage fright throughout the whole performance, omg! All I do now is laugh because it was embarrassing, but it was funny because it happened at his gig!” The former child star sadly passed away last year, but as Angel-Ho notes ” he lives on”.

    This charming anecdote may almost seem out of place with Angel-Ho’s dystopian and sexualized work. But while they deals with intense subject matter they sees their work as embodying a hard-won optimism. In response to a question about how politics impacts on his practise, they suggested that it’s about keeping positive in dark times. ” There’s no escaping reality and fantasy, they are the same. Of course, what happens around you affects you, and people collectively. With every event that happens globally, we see the repeating of white supremacy and collateral violence which comes out of a desire to maintain power. You see it in South Africa, you see it everywhere in scales. It makes me want to spread good energy and make tracks which counter negativity. What better way to step away from negativity then to let it thrive in itself, like a parasite with no wound to feed on?”

    To this end, 2016 has seen them spreading good energy around the world. They recently took on the Performa Biennale in New York, in collaboration with Dope Saint Jude, Vuyo Sotashe, Jackie Manyaapelo and Athi-Patra Ruga. Their forays into the world of High Art also saw them unleash the firestorm of his Red Devil performance on the Berlin Biennale. This performance was inspired by the Kaapse Kloopse festivals- ” Red Devil was a desire to be your complete diva self, in my drag. It had a lot to do with the Red Devil performer who  traditionally lead the atjas in procession, and would scare the kids away alongside moffies. Red Devil, in my case, was chasing away fears, in celebration of the things which make people separate from each other. It became an intervention where I performed a re-birth of my feme energy, without restraint, using fire to light the way.”

    The performance has the Devil transformed into a character called Gia. The theme of transformation is central to his work more generally “our generation leads by not conforming to gender, race, sexuality… As a performer it became important to tell the narratives which I live day by day, to be fearless”. And with their track record, the secret projects they has lined up for 2017 are bound to be as fearless.

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