Tag: post colonial

‘Trauma & Identity’ Group Exhibition at Gallery One11 by the NJE Collective

The NJE Collective‘s latest group exhibition opened at Gallery One11 last night and has as its focus its Womxn contributors and the themes intrinsic in their practice incited by the current realities in Namibia on a political, socio-economic and cultural level.

In discussion with a member of the group, Jo Rogge, she expresses that ‘Trauma & Identity’ relates to individual and collective realities that Namibian citizens are faced with in a time when Namibia suffers under immense poverty, rife corruption, gender violence, unemployment and the depletion of national resources amongst other factors. Jo adds that, “…the queer space while dynamic, remains a vulnerable target for random hate-speech and physical assault.”

The participating artists for the exhibition include Jo Rogge, Masiyaleti Mbewe, Tuli Mekondjo, Silke Berens, Tangeni Kauzuu and Hildegard Titus. The artists engage in equivocal concerns founded on personal as well as political experiences. The experiences addressed include gender and cultural identity, nationhood, belonging and recognition. Jo explains, “This exhibition encapsulates the diversity and complexity of individual and collective narratives as witnessed through the lens of each artist, drawing on either historical or current narratives.” Artworks that will be featured will include photographs, paintings, installation, and mixed media works.

The relevance of this discourse within a South African gallery space is elaborated on by Jo as, “Namibia’s history is closely aligned with that of SA with the SADF having fought a bloody war against SWAPO on its northern borders from 1966 until prior to Independence in 1990. The post-colonial space is darkened with the lingering shadows of the apartheid system and racism. Unlike South Africa, Namibia has never seen the need for a process of reconciliation and there is a lot of unresolved trauma and pain in the national consciousness.”

‘Onde ku hole’, oil on canvas, 2018 by Jo Rogge

NJE Collective, formerly known as SoNamibia, decided to change their collective name in order to embrace multilocality as a means to evade issues concerning nationality that is regarded as patriarchal and exclusive.

Members of NJE Collective are either invited to take part in a specific exhibition or approach the collective themselves to become members of the group. The collective’s fluid membership means that members remain active by choice. Currently, the collective has eight practicing members.

* NJE functions under its own management, towards shared goals. It is also a space for mentoring, peer support and sharing resources. Meetings take place individually as well as in a group format in order to discuss topics of common interest, creative practice, and the potential for collaboration.

Come and support the work of these Womxn artists whose show will run at Gallery One11 until the 28th April 2018.

‘Collateral Damage’, oil on canvas, 2018 by Silke Berens

13 April 2018
Pussy on a Plinth // elevating the personal as political through paper-based prints and zines

Hearing about young, womxn-only collectives in Johannesburg is always a moment of excitement and encouragement for me. It speaks to the importance of collaborative work as well as the necessity for womxn to provide creative and emotional support to one another when learning to navigate art spaces in the city. Pussy On A Plinth (POP) is one such collective. The collective includes the artists Yolanda Mtombeni, Boipelo Khunou, Lebogang “Mogul” Mabusela, Allyssa Herman, Cheriese Maharaj, Lara Bekker, Zinhle E. Gule, Penny Muduvhadzi, Nthabeleng Masudubele, Didi Allie and Janine Bezuidenhout.

When asked about where the name for the collective came from, they shared that it emerged out of conversations about an image from a nude shoot that involved two of the members. “In one of these images, one of them was seated on a plinth. That is when we began discussions around what that image could possibly mean.” Wanting to unpack this further, I asked about what kind of ideological weight they are hoping their name will have, particularly when combined with their creative practice.

“The name attempts to disrupt the patriarchal structures both in society and the white cube gallery spaces. Putting a pussy on a plinth speaks of uplifting, bringing attention to, as well as monumentalizing the work of womxn artists. ‘Pussy’ in this instance, is used as a reclamation of power by attempting to normalize the use and essence of the word as a term that is not derogatory or belittling.”

Since the inception of POP their work has manifest in the form of paper-based prints and zines. These are often guided by reflections on their experiences and thoughts as womxn. “Our work is interrogative, illustrative, engaging for the public and thought provoking,” they express.

The most recent display of their work was at the Lephephe print gathering towards the end of 2017, which was hosted and organized by Keleketla Library! in collaboration with the collective Title in Transgression. For this they created an image-focused zine to introduce POP and its members. In addition to this they hosted a zine workshop that zoomed in on the question ‘What is your personal politics?’ Reflecting on this, they shared that “the experience was inspiring and affirming; [it allowed us to] communicate our processes, thoughts as well as our goals with the public and other artists in the space as a collective.

The work of the collective and of each member ties into the ideas shared by the 70s feminist slogan ‘The personal is political’ which was adopted from Carol Hanisch’s essay by the same name. Individually, under this larger umbrella, they each have specific areas of focus, which sometimes overlap. These include patriarchal culture, post-colonial or gendered culture; the gaze, human consumption, black womxnhood and its experiences; mental health and associated topics; as well as the effects of post-colonial, patriarchal and gendered cultures. When listing these themes, it is quite easy to see how their collective has become an extension of their individual thematic foci.

When asked about what they have in the works for 2018, they shared that, “We are working on hosting more zine jams at various spots in Johannesburg where people can engage and contribute to the zine archive that has started building up. There is also a plan to have a womxn takeover at the DGI studio as a type of physical alteration of the male-dominated space. The result of this will be a print show which we have been organizing for a while now. The prints we will be producing will mostly consist of relief prints, ‘relief’ being in the form of printmaking, but also as a literal form of relief for us as womxn, as a collective and as individuals.”

POP hopes to continue to grow as a collective by getting involved in work and art spaces beyond paper-based prints and zines. To keep up with their growth and the possibility of new artistic directions, check them out on Instagram.

14 February 2018
Boda Boda Lounge Project – Defying Inter-Continental Boundaries through Digital Pixels

A historical Imperialism, articulated through invasion and occupation. A systematic division spawned from the imaginations of white men to conquer for capital gains. A continent sliced up by the butcher’s knife of colonialism. Corners of conflict, fictioned intersections amputated and dislocated. A coloniality that runs through the semi-visible veins of demarcated territory. The divide between here and there.

Border
[bawr-der]
noun

1.the part or edge of a surface or area that forms its outer boundary.

2.the line that separates

6.brink; verge.

The phonetic Boda Boda Lounge Project emerged two years ago, as an intercontinental visual engagement that began to explore the notion of physical and conceptual mobility between spatially divided land. Fifteen different art organizations hosted the event across Africa this year. The project took place during the weekend of 18^th-20^th of November. Simnikiwe Buhlungu was one of the participating artists peppered across the continent.

Simnikiwe exhibited a video piece entitled System to Dekakanise – she describes the piece as an exploration into “the complicated existence of languages in a socio-historical and cultural context in South Africa through the use of drawing and what I call Broken Inglish as a way of navigating various spaces.” The piece is an interesting and nuanced critique – articulating the legacy of assimilated English that stemmed from colonial rule and seeps into the contemporary moment.

Boda Boda transcends borders through its, “cross-continental approach. The fact that the videos are simultaneously screened in various African countries which have different, but similar, socio-political climates and histories. While the videos may engage in the same framework (of the project), they are all equally different and tell stories from different perspectives.” Through this mode of representation, the project avoided singular narratives.

The young artist perceived the conceptual crux of the project as, “Engaging with the spaces by which the artists are surrounded. Negotiating issues that exists both in the centre and on the periphery. Probing socio-political, cultural and historical thought with issues that are (un)discussed on the African continent. Doing so through the medium of video, which has its own history and existence in Africa. Something that is still somewhat of [an] overlooked medium in some respects, but also a medium that can be transferred to daily experiences do to its versatility as a technology. So finding a meeting point between these engagements and the medium of video.”

Her engagement with other artists was heavily facilitated by digital media, “the engagement is not necessarily a physical one. It’s a virtual engagement, an (un)spoken engagement, it’s also a visual engagement when you see the other artists’ videos for the first time whether you are aware of their respective practices or not.” In this way work becomes a lens and proxy for physical interactions.

Conceptual links that spanned the continent were notions of, “transgenerational conflicts, trauma, [un]written histories, bodies and what these bodies endure, navigating new and old spaces, language[s], socio-politics, economies of various kinds, colonial(ities) urgency and artistic response to these urgencies.”

Atef Berredjem (Algeria)

Awuor Onyango (Kenya)

Boitumelo Motau (South Africa)

Cameron Platter (South Africa)

Christopher Wessels (South Africa)

Ezra Wube (Ethiopia)

Francois Knoetze (South Africa)

Bofa Da Cara

Gustave Fundi Mwamba (DRC)

Jere Ikongio (Nigeria)

Junior Nyembwe (DRC)

Kutala Chopeto (South Africa)

Lydia Ourahmane (Algeria)

Maurice Mbikayi (DRC)

Mulugeta Gebrekidan (Ethiopia)

Ngassam Tchatchoua Yvon Léolein (Cameroon)

Ntathu Mandisa Gumbi (South Africa)

Ori Huchi Kozia (Congo Brazzaville)

Paulo Azevedo (Angola)

Simnikiwe Buhlungu (South Africa)

Simohammed Fettaka (Morocco)

Sisipho Mase (South Africa)

Sofiane Zouggar (Algeria)

Teboho Gilbert Letele (South Africa)

Ubulungiswa Justice Collaboration (South Africa)

Vincent Bezuidenhout & Nobushinge Kono (South Africa & Japan)

Salooni (Uganda)

Wiame Haddad (Morocco/ Tunisia)

28 November 2016
Simphiwe Ndzube: symbolic threads of reclaimed identity

Conceptual threads perforate the surface of fabric, textured by intimate histories negotiating a post-colonial experience. The Cape Town based artist, Simphiwe Ndzube, engages with a spectrum of mediums. These materials often include the appropriation of found objects – through which he stitches together a visual narrative, located in the experience of blackness in post-apartheid South Africa. “Articles of clothing and fabric become a skin, bound together by thread and combined with found objects, which both reveal and conceal forms.”

A dynamic tension between empathy and assault is constructed through the distortion of figures in Ndzube’s work. The underlying violence in the act of cutting, puncturing cloth and pulling threads is countered by assembling the amputated pieces together. He often draws from the, “context of disability and the physical violence of the genocides committed against black bodies both during and after the advent of European Imperialism”

“The act of stitching is a therapeutic and meditative process, a form of repair, but it also acknowledges the past experiences and wounds that persist and influence me as an artist.” Cultural exchange and an exploration of historical time is made manifest in the work. The presence of both monetary and symbolic capital is articulated through the diasporic movements of the textiles Ndzube acquires. “Africa has become a repository for the second hand clothing companies, in which an uneven exchange of capital gain takes place between the exporters and the locals who buy and sell these clothes.”

The cloth figures in his work often visually resemble notions of Black dandyism. “The dandy resists conformity to Western stereotypes through a complex subversion and reinterpretation of style and Western modes of dress. I have been looking at sartorial groups like the Swenkas, a group of black dandies that emerged during the grip of apartheid in the quasi-urban settlements of Johannesburg”

These suave ‘rebel-figures’ undermine projected expectations and limiting classifications through a reclamation of identity – embodying multiple representations within one form. “He is a warrior figure that bears both scars of cultural, social and political imposition, yet despite this, he stands in defiance. He refuses to conform to any social conditions that seek to render him powerless and to hate himself. He is self-defined.”

9 September 2016