Bubblegum Club

Tag: race

  • Janiva Ellis’ visceral paintings comfort as well as unsettle

    Janiva Ellis’ visceral paintings comfort as well as unsettle

    Transcending both reality and fantasy, Janiva Ellis creates vivid paintings with unconstrained composition where vibrant colours offer a hint of cheerfulness and comfort, while exploring pain and violence.

    Ellis is a Los Angeles-based visual artist working primarily as a painter. She creates raw and intimate paintings of contorted, exaggerated, drooping and distorted human and human like forms.

    Her representation of figures is not bound by any fixed formality —decapitated heads, floating heads, heads with multiple sets of eyes, internal organs erupting from the body —these depictions are surreal but also a little bit frightening.

    “To me, my images aren’t any more violent than many everyday interactions. Any more anguished than they are obliged. The unrest in my work represents a release, a shared sardonic moment of tension and amusement.” – shares Ellis in an interview with Artsy.

    Ellis is most known for her dark and absurdist paintings which integrate cartoons and bold colours. In 2017, she presented a series of paintings at New York’s 47 Canal Gallery (Lick Shot) seeking to explore her own experiences of pain – using playfulness as a form of reprieve. Curator Kevin McGarry described the show as “a series of glimpses into the divine comedy of existing in a world where pain is met with doubt; into dynamics that are blatant and never-ending, yet consistently denied their truth.”

    Despite the seemingly humorous and playful approach, Ellis’ works acts as a critical framework for exploring deep psychological trauma and the very complex intersections between race and gender. Her work often has an unexpected effect of shock, much like how trauma itself works. “You’re in this pleasant situation, picking up a cabbage, but there’s still a fraught dialogue that happens, whether it be a memory or somethings a stranger says that can feel psychologically eviscerating” she explained in an interview with the New York Times, speaking in particular to one of her paintings; ‘Curb-Check Regular, Black Chick’ (2017). This work depicts a scene at a fruit and vegetable market with one of the character’s insides gushing outside of her body.

    Ellis participated in The 2018 New Museum Triennial – an exhibition dedicated to providing an important platform for a new generation of artist shaping the global discourse in contemporary art. This year’s participants included; Cian Dayrit (b. 1989, Manila, Philippines), Haroon Gunn-Salie (b. 1989, Cape Town, South Africa) and Chemu Ng’ok (b. 1989, Nairobi, Kenya) among others. The theme; ‘Songs of Sabotage’ sought to investigate “how individuals and collectives around the world might effectively address the connection of images and culture to the forces that structure our society”. Ellis’ satirical paintings – which seems weightless yet fraught with immerse heaviness – offer a degree of political engagement and continue to build a dialogue around issues of trauma and violence.

    Ellis’ work carries a beautiful strangeness and offers us strategies of release through giving form and a new language to pain – disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed.

  • Serpentwithfeet – Standing Tall

    Serpentwithfeet – Standing Tall

    The most immediately noticeable thing about upcoming musician Serpentwithfeet aka Josiah Wise is his striking visual image. In his press photos, he rocks a massive septum piercing, an occasionally multi-coloured beard and face tattoos which announce SUICIDE and HEAVEN around the centerpiece of a pentagram. This brash image may remind you of a Soundcloud rapper, but in truth his angelic, classically trained voice makes him more like Nina Simone than Lil Pump.

    Raised in a religious household in Baltimore, Wise was immersed in both gospel and classical music growing up, and originally aspired to be an opera singer. The challenges and intense personal experiences of a life as a young, gay black man pushed him to an exploratory sound which merges the sweetest pop and the harshest noise. On the 2016 EP blisters and his new album soil, he uses music to explore the tensions, productive or irreconcilable, between earthy sexuality and spiritual yearning, love, lust and belief. These elements spark an exciting blaze which is being noticed throughout the music world. blisters includes production by Bjork-collaborator and film composer The Haxan Cloak, while soil saw him working with the divergent likes of cloud rap legend Clams Casino and Adele co-writer Paul Epworth.

    The importation of sacred musical tropes into carnal themes is brilliantly outlaid in his choice of nom de plume. In the Christian tradition, the snake is a low, bestial figure which corrupts humanity with sin and self-consciousness. In contrast, the image of a walking snake counters that knowledge of desire and sex is the path to true liberation, to at last proudly striding upright in the sun. His work reminds me of a famous quote by the great writer James Baldwin who undertook similar explorations of race, gender and religion – “If the concept of God has any use, it is to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God can’t do that, it’s time we got rid of him”. In an era of violent orthodoxy and fundamentalist hypocrisy, Serpentwithfeet is a call to listen to the inner voices which call to us to free both ourselves and each other.

  • Sam Vernon’s very suggestive, emblematic images and abstract scenes confront personal and historical memories

    Sam Vernon’s very suggestive, emblematic images and abstract scenes confront personal and historical memories

    A human body lies covered in what appears to be thick, solid pieces of cutout paper. The body is fully covered; barring from the knee down. The image has all the components that engender a sense of familiarity. However, something is off. One of the legs is twisted and both are lifted —suggesting that the body underneath is still breathing. This photograph (Laid, 2011) by artist Sam Vernon seems to say something significant and fateful about the body (particularly the black body) and its presence in the world.…it breathes intrigue into our imagination.

    Vernon is a multi and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the connection between memory, personal narrative and identity. “Through site-specific, staged installations and urgent performances my goals are towards the production of Gothic visual art in which Black narratives are included in the expanse of the genre,” Vernon states in an interview with African Digital Art.

    Vernon goes beyond the confines of a single medium by combining drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptural components— transmuting their form from two dimensional to three dimensional works which become elastic and nonconforming. Her means of expression are constantly evolving as she continuously moves from illustrations, digital, performance and back.

    Vernon’s digital prints, drawings and collages are typically black and white, perhaps an indication of an enhanced awareness of the past. The work is not always easy to process, and yet it remains vivid and clear. Through Vernon’s works, we travel through time towards the vast depth of her experiences. She describes an understanding of the past as a necessary means towards a better understanding of the self in the creation of the future.

    Despite having a visual language that is difficult to pin down  —with elements of abstraction, patterns and human-like figures —Vernon’s voice remains strong. This voice is further amplified by the specificity in the symbolism used to confront her subjects. “The active ‘ghosting‘ of an image, copying and multiplying the original, subtlety exploits the notion of a pure identification of black and white and signifies the essentialism of symbolic meaning and all its associations.”

    Through her practice Vernon deconstructs and redefines narratives that inform memories and collective history through the lens of race and gender. Through her most recent show Rage Wave with G44: Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto, Vernon presented an ambitious exhibition bringing together images, photocopies, drawings and prints to reflect on post-coloniality, racial, sexual and historic memory. She has also presented works at Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, among many others.

    Vernon’s work, with all its layers of complexity, remain a critical part of moving the conversation on black narratives forward. Her works have a sense of timelessness, where the past and the present seem to merge….perhaps because notions and conceptions of race and gender underpinning the work also have a sense of timelessness. Even as time passes, the trauma of the violent past continues to haunt.

  • Artist Wanja Kimani’s interrogations of private and public power

    Artist Wanja Kimani’s interrogations of private and public power

    Kenyan-born artist Wanja Kimani has a visual practice that strings together stories and visual histories which comment on the idea of home, displacement, trauma, memories and imaginations.

    While imposing elements of her own life in public spaces, she occupies the positions of both narrator and character. This is evident in the various media she uses to construct her work, including installation, performances, text, film, textiles and sound.

    One of her recent works Expectations, a collaboration with Annabel McCourt, is a performance that was presented at Dak’Art 2018 – Biennale of Contemporary African Art. It was performed in response to Annabel McCourt’s Electric Fence. The work dives into the complexities surrounding borders, immigration, race, as well as private and public power, and how these forms of power are constructed. These larger themes are interwoven with explorations of mortality as well as personal and physical boundaries.

    In the video of the performance online, the first few seconds create the impression of eyes opening after a long sleep, with shots of lights hanging from the ceiling and wire fencing coming in and out of focus. The voice of the narrator recalls memories from a childhood, presumably the childhood of the character (played by Kimani) that appears on screen. As the narrator goes on to explain how walls will come separate the children mentioned in the recollection of memories, the viewer sees Kimani maneuvering between wire fences and throwing rocks and bricks on top of each other, as if intending to build a wall or to examine what remains of the structure these bricks once constituted.

    The poetic narration speaks of silencing, leaving home, crossing borders, and the traumas that accompany this. The interaction between the words and what the viewer sees create a heaviness, the relevance of which becomes apparent as the story of Charles Wootton is told. The narrator shares how Wootton has died as a result of a racially motivated crime in Liverpool in 1919. He was thrown into the water at Kings Dock, and as he swam, trying to lift himself out of the water, he was pelted by bricks until he sank. Kimani writes his name on a blackboard during the performance. She then goes on to write down the names of many other victims of hate crimes. In this way the victims are mourned and celebrated at the same time.

  • Dancer and Choreographer Jeremy Nedd shapes multidisciplinary performative pieces

    Dancer and Choreographer Jeremy Nedd shapes multidisciplinary performative pieces

    Choreographer and classically trained dancer Jeremy Nedd lives and practices in Brooklyn, NY. Studying dance from a very young age (8 years old), Jeremy gradually stepped into creating original choreographed pieces after many years of performing the choreography of others.

    As a dancer he studied in New York and relied on his own intuition to train himself in choreography. “Choreography for me was always just a continuation or fulfilling of my ideas as a dancer, so I didn’t think to go to program.” In 2016 Jeremy left a position he kept in a theater and began a Masters in ‘Expanded Theater’ at the Hochschule der Künste Bern.

    With ‘Expanded Theater’ Jeremy created a stage for himself to experiment. This experimentation is put into action by what Jeremy describes as composing images per-formatively through music, art and dramatic theatre techniques.

    In discussion with the multi form artist he unpacks his work and approach to creating.

    What is Communal Solo about and can you please unpack the title? How was this work approached and who are the people that are participating in this performance?

    It was quite the journey to get it to the point that it is now, at least a years worth of work, if not more. In the very early stages of the work I was very caught up on the idea that theater was considered a communal experience. This ritual that we as a spectating pubic go and watch, while a someone performs.

    I always wondered where in this constellation was the communal connection. Was it shared between the members of the public… or was it between the public and the performer(s)? Somehow I felt there was a disconnect, so I wanted to see if there was another way to achieve a sense of community in the theatre space.

    After many attempts at creating, majority participatory based, communal acts in the theater, I found the most natural way for me to access a feeling of community was looking to how actual community is built around issues that deeply concern me. So in the end Communal Solo was inspired by experiences of mourning, celebration and protest, and how these collective experiences or communal gatherings correlate and coalesce in connection to a specific narrative – the recurrent violence in the form of Police brutality against the African-American community in the United States. This work made significant developments in this direction with Deborah Hollman.

    ‘An Homage’ photographed by Ayka Lux and Erwan Schmidt

    Can you tell me more about your creative process?

    I suppose this is where I could come back to the message in my work, Even though I come from a classical ballet education and history of performing contemporary ballets professionally my practice has had a focus on utilizing movement modes that are not based in codified dance techniques or not associated with the institution size theater idea of trained dance.

    I find the constant themes that have informed my work revolve around; utilizing online resources, the process of dissection, demystification and re-contextualization and confronting definitions of validity and contemporaneity specifically in western spaces for art and theater. I am hoping to introduce new ideas of ‘virtuosity’ and where these perceptions land on ideas and narratives around race, gender and economic status (mine own as black male in particular). And in doing so attempting to inject validity into certain narratives and aesthetics.

    ‘An Homage’

    What is the significance of space to your practice?

    Space is integral, my girlfriend is an Architect. Through her I’ve really accessed a whole other understanding of the idea of “a body in space”. Especially considering how in a lot of contemporary practices the idea of space, be it physical or virtual is a very present topic.

    How does the moving human form relate to space in your work?

    As I mentioned before, now that I’m actively incorporating other disciplines in my practice, sculpture and installation for example, these operate very differently when presented in different contexts. Museum, Theater or Public Space/ Site Specific are all very different contexts  and influence an audience reception to a work in different ways.

    At present Jeremy is developing his next project exploring Sad Boy Rap. The project which is due to premiere at the end of this month is being created in collaboration with Maximilian Hanisch and Laurel Knüsel. The piece titled, ‘Sad Boy Culture’ will be premiering at the Festival Belluard Bollwerk International in Fribourg, Switzerland.

    In August the performer will be in Johannesburg for a few months working on a new project with the Pantsula’s of Impilo Mapantsula.

    ‘An Homage’
    ‘re(mains)’
    ‘re(mains)’
  • Artist Sabella D’Souza on the privilege of passing

    Artist Sabella D’Souza on the privilege of passing

    “Indian-Australian? Never felt that, never heard of that, never tasted that, never smelt that.*”

    These are the opening words of Sabella D’Souza’s work titled 22/f/aus. As a performance artists based in Sydney she interweaves notions of cultural hybridity, virtual identity and the transnationality of cyberspace with identity signifiers such as race and gender. A central focus in her work is unpacking the importance of safe spaces on and offline for people of colour and queer people.

    “WikiHow*: to perform whiteness

    The privilege of passing is undeniable”

    22/f/aus plays in the discursive make up of the internet and the kind of interactions and social “passing” that it has engendered. The work is presented in a similar fashion to YouTube makeup tutorial and a wiki-how guide to survive the erasure of racial, and queer identity in virtual communities, specifically for women and non-binary people of colour. By utilizing the conventions of a YouTube or wiki-how tutorial the viewer is initially overcome with a sense of familiarity, having scrolled through a number of these online before. However, the subtitles that display across the bottom of the screen push you into a different frame of reference. The work is powerful in its ability to use the language of the internet video to paint a picture of what it means to occupy a space that is considered “white by default”. With her step-by-step instructions merged together with her own experiences on online interactive platforms, D’Souza exposes casual exoticization and how certain online spaces make one feel as if they need to “pass” as another identity to enjoy a safe online experience.

    Check out the video below.

  • ANY BODY ZINE // writings on dance, movement and embodied politics

    ANY BODY ZINE // writings on dance, movement and embodied politics

    “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)
  • Writer and activist Achal Prabhala on expanding the parameters for what is considered knowledge

    Writer and activist Achal Prabhala on expanding the parameters for what is considered knowledge

    “When books are scarce, people are knowledge”

    This is a quote from an email interview I had with Bangalore-based writer and activist Achal Prabhala. It is an introduction to the thinking behind the Oral Citations Project – a project he was involved in which explored alternative methods of citation for Wikipedia and ways to redefine who or what is understood to be a knowledge source.

    As a writer, the majority of his work focuses on race and pop culture. However what ties his writing together is his accumulated work in small publications, which he describes as “beautiful, odd magazines” in our exchanges via email. These include Bidoun, Chimurenga, Transition and African Is A Country. As an activist, he currently works on increasing access to medicines for life-threatening conditions like AIDS, cancer and Hepatitis C in India, Brazil and South Africa.

    The Oral Citations Project aimed to bring the periphery to the centre, and simultaneously expand on the way in which knowledge is defined. However, before unpacking the project it is necessary to contextualize its presence.

    Wikipedia has been criticized as a site for reflecting a Western, male-dominated mindset. This is translated into the way in which knowledge sources used for Wikipedia articles are framed, mimicking the old encyclopedias it is supposed to replace. Some critics have stressed the tradition of footnotes and sourced articles as references and citations needs to be re-thought. This is relevant as there is an abundance of knowledge that exists outside of books and the internet that cannot be present on Wikipedia because it cannot be sourced and referenced within the package that Wikipedia requires. Following on from this critique, Achal, who was an adviser to the Wikimedia Foundation at the time of the project, embarked on unpicking this policy and finding a way to present information that did not fit into that mould. This resulted in a short film titled “People are Knowledge“, which demonstrated how much knowledge is lost due to Wikipedia’s citation and verification policy, as well as provided an opening to be able to allow the site to be more inclusive of other knowledge sources.

    The project was planned with three Wikipedia languages in mind – Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi – and took place across various places in South Africa and India. It involved interviews with academics and ordinary people to document everyday practices that had not been shared on Wikipedia before due to the limitations mentioned above.

    I had an interview with Achal to find out more about the project and if it has assisted in expanding Wikipedia’s knowledge base.

    When conducting interviews, how did you explain what Wikipedia is to the people who had never heard of the site before?

    This is a great question. Let me start by explaining who we interviewed and how. I interviewed people along with Wikipedians who knew them; for instance, in South Africa, we interviewed people in Ga-Sebotlane, a remote rural location in Limpopo, and I was guided by Mohau Monaledi, who lives in Pretoria, but is from Limpopo, and speaks Sepedi. Mohau is a prolific Wikipedian, and founded the Northern Sotho Wikipedia project, which is now a little gem of the Internet: it went from 500 articles in 2011 to over 8000 currently. It is the largest South African Wikipedia after Afrikaans. I was one of the people who helped get it off the ground, and I’m enormously proud of where it is today, way ahead of larger language groups in the country like Zulu, and even on the continent, like Igbo.

    The people we spoke to were working women who were fluent in Sepedi, but not English. They were women who worked in their houses and on the land, and had been doing it for years. Cellphones were common, but none of them had heard of Wikipedia. So, we explained what we were doing, explained what Wikipedia was, and why we wanted to talk to them. They got it immediately. It’s important to note that we weren’t asking the women we interviewed to part with family secrets or private historical memories: we were talking to them about how they prepared Mokgope (a fermented drink made with Marula fruit), and how they played popular village games such as Kgati and Tshere-tshere. In other words, we were interested in bringing everyday aspects of their lives to Wikipedia, and they liked the idea.

    How do you explain the importance of documenting everyday practices to the people you interviewed who fell outside of the academic space? What were their reactions?

    I will confess, wherever we went – from Limpopo in South Africa, to Kerala and Haryana in India – we were met with enthusiasm, but also puzzlement. A number of people I met in Ga-Sebotlane and Thrissur were just flat-out amused that anyone would be interested in documenting the most mundane aspects of their existence. I am almost as much a foreigner in rural India as in rural South Africa, and I suspect they thought of me as some crazy guy who had to be indulged. But once we started asking questions, and they could see our intent was serious, I think they were quite thrilled that someone was showing interest. It’s been beaten into our heads that we have a lot to learn from Professor Humdrum at Harvard, but not so much from Ms Moremi in the field under the Marula tree in Limpopo. And by us I mean not just you and me, but also the people under the Marula tree.

    Speaking for myself, the moment I flipped that ridiculous assumption within my own head, and treated the people I was talking to as important people with important things to say, they saw themselves that way as well. The mere act of listening made it easy for people to see themselves as repositories of knowledge – and this switch was a joy to watch, like a light being turned on.

    Unpack the importance of inserting underrepresented people, practices and languages online, particularly on a site associated with the collation of knowledge sources such as Wikipedia?

    The answer to this question is important. The answer also makes me furious, so I’ll take a deep breath first.

    All right. Let’s take what we did in Limpopo. We created articles, based on our conversations with people, on Mokgope, Kgati, and Tshere-tshere. Until that point, these things did not exist as public knowledge on the internet, even as they had existed for decades as public knowledge in everyday life. Millions, if not all South Africans, know exactly what these things are. Let us consider their equivalents in France: Pastis (which should be a human rights violation) has a detailed Wikipedia article in 22 languages; Pétanque has a detailed Wikipedia article in 41 languages; Boules has a detailed Wikipedia article in 31 languages.

    At this time, because of the project we ran, Sepedi Wikipedia has one article each on Morula, Kgati and Tshere-tshere. Detailed articles, with interviews as citations, and pictures to go with words. No knowledge of these three things, however, exists in any other language; the articles have not been translated. Arguably, no one who speaks Sepedi needs reminding what Morula is. Just as, arguably, the English world would be expanded by a formal understanding of what Morula is. But that hasn’t happened, because English Wikipedia deems Sepedi knowledge unworthy, as well as suspect – since in the case of these three articles, it isn’t based on something published in a book – and we’ve given up holding our breath.

    France has 66 million people. South Africa has 56 million people. Person for person, they’re not that different. On Wikipedia, however, they’re worlds apart. One is a country with Human Beings who Know Things; the other is not. I recounted my experience of documenting village games in India and South Africa to a German scholar.

    He jokingly said, if these were village games in Germany, they would each be given a 7-volume manual to accompany them, and would have become Olympic sports by now. I laughed, but it’s true. I don’t think Mokgope, Kgati or Tshere-tshere are any less real because there’s no record of them in books or the Internet, or because Europeans have no idea what they are. But the legitimation, transmission and circulation of knowledge holds a unique power in the world: the power of universality, the power to render holders of that knowledge fully, equally and undeniably human.

    By far the most tiresome aspect of conducting the exercise was explaining it to Wikipedians. I had some really strange conversations on public mailing lists. The prevailing view on Wikipedia was best expressed by a German historian resident in the Netherlands called Ziko van Dijk. I explained my project. He replied with the condescension of a schoolteacher scolding a naughty child, and asked me to leave history to the historians. I tried to point out that documenting one beverage and two village games in Limpopo hardly constituted messing with history. He did not budge; he remained adamant that my secret agenda was to infect Wikipedia with mythological juju. He kept at it for years, advocating increasingly bizarre theories, such as that recognising oral traditions would, somehow, allow him to claim to be a descendant of Charlemagne. (For good measure, he also threw in an inexplicable incident about “a territory in Africa, occupied by the British” where some King was maybe thought to have had seven sons, and then maybe thought to have had only five, which was, in his view, conclusive proof that you must never trust anyone without a PhD in history).

    Unpack the title for the project and the film, People are Knowledge?

    When books are scarce, people are knowledge.

    I don’t think of this as a problem. It’s simply a fact. It would be nice to have more books, sure. But, as Geetha Narayanan says in the film, “Coming from a culture where so little is written down, do we then say we know nothing?” The assumption that people who don’t have books are dumb, is plainly preposterous. In the course of rearranging our ideas about books, knowledge and stupidity, however, there are some underlying conditions to consider.

    One: Rich countries produce plenty of books, poor countries do not. Every year, the UK produces 1 new book for every 300 people. In South Africa, however, the figure is 1 new book for every 7000 people, and in India, even worse, at 1 new book for every 11000 people. In historical absolutes, the number of books produced in the US and Europe outstrips every other country in the world. What this means is that the knowledge of South Africa and India is not in books.

    Two: Even when local books exist in poor countries, they’re inaccessible. Public library networks are weak, digitization and electronic access is almost non-existent, with the effect that if you live in a country like India and South Africa, and want to reference an existing book, it is frequently not available to you.

    Three: Even when there is media – books, periodicals, journals, newspapers – to cite, if the media comes from a country outside the US and Europe, it is suspect, at least on Wikipedia. Countries like South Africa and India may have huge newspapers that cater to millions of readers, but Wikipedia refuses to accept that something happened unless it happened in the New York Times. The most famous instance of this bias is with the fictional Kenyan phenomenon called Makmende, which, despite being written up in The Daily Nation and The Standard, two respected Kenyan newspapers with gigantic readerships, was refused a Wikipedia entry until the story merited a mention in a ‘real’ paper, the Wall Street Journal. We’re told the way to play the game is to catch up. Write more! Publish more! Then, when we do that, we’re told, umm hold on: that’s not good enough. Because, of course, nothing really happens unless it happens in a journal published out of Cambridge or a newspaper in Manhattan. And Wikipedia is passionately committed to this warped, outmoded, colonial view of the world. Instead of playing the imitation game, I thought, why not turn the tables?

    On your project site, I read the argument that Wikipedia does not take advantage of “internet objects”. Can you share why this is an important statement when thinking about expanding citations on Wikipedia?

    Wikipedia is a publisher on the Internet, but it is deeply suspicious of the Internet. This is a fundamental fault line, and it is already fracturing Wikipedia. When you have a new system of publishing, one that is non-profit, public, and supposedly revolutionary, a system that was made by the Internet and that could only exist on the Internet and moreover, relies on the anonymous labour of crowds to work, in that case, to exclusively rely on words printed on paper for authority is ludicrous.

    Wikipedia is an open platform that is made entirely by user contributions. But it disallows citations from IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) and classifies it as an unreliable source, because, wait for it, IMDB is an open platform that is made entirely by user contributions.

    In the early years of Wikipedia, in 2005, Jimmy Wales (the founder of Wikipedia) was fond of saying “We help the Internet not suck.” That was then, before blogging became legit, before the smartphone was invented, before social media took over our lives. Now, in 2018, thanks to the combined force of cheap data, cheap Android phones and social media, we have infinite choices. There are many ways in which social media sucks, but one way it definitely does not is in being a fairly democratic global force in which anyone can participate.

    In 2005, Wikipedia was pitched in a fierce battle for legitimacy against the print edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, and it was arguably better than anything on the Internet. In 2018, Britannica is dead, Wikipedia reigns supreme, and, I would argue, it has become considerably less democratic, less open, less global, less diverse and less inclusive than anything else on the Internet. Everything on Wikipedia says 2001, especially its deliberately maddening interface, but nothing says ‘hello yesterday!’ as much as its refusal to treat the Internet as a place of knowledge, or its refusal to learn the one useful lesson social media can teach us, which is that projects prosper by inviting people in, not by keeping most of the world out. Let me put this more simply. If I wish to learn about French food, which I can’t eat, because I’m lactose intolerant, I’ll go to Wikipedia, but if I wish to learn about South Indian cuisine, which I can eat, and love, I’ll go to YouTube.

    In a New York Times article on your project, you mention that publishing is a system of power. Could you please unpack this, and how this fits into the foundation for People are Knowledge?

    I’m from Bangalore, in India. I studied in the US, but haven’t worked there. The only countries I have  lived and worked in outside my home are South Africa and Brazil. Currently, my work is spread across Bangalore, Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro. So I know what unequal geography looks like, and I am intimately aware of how colonialism lingers in the mind long after it’s officially gone. I knew a whole lot about Manhattan before I stepped foot in it; I knew very little of Johannesburg before I got there. I knew that words said in London were meaningful; I knew that words said in Bangalore were kind of meaningless.

    One of the nice things about becoming an adult was becoming confident enough to challenge this idiocy. And because the Internet existed when I grew up, and especially because Wikipedia existed, I believed, naively, that this was our great opportunity to rewrite the world. Let’s face it: we will never catch up with the accumulated mass of formal knowledge produced by Europe and the US. Not going to happen.But in the digital world? I did think it was the one place where we could have a kind of equality; new rules for a new world. Every movement in the last 20 years signaled that equality was near: the invention of Wikipedia, the drop in telecom prices, the proliferation of cheap Chinese smart phones, the millions of people coming online in places like India, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa.

    And yet, it did not work out that way. Publishing has always been about power.

    In the 14th century, you could be killed for translating the Bible into languages people actually spoke. In the 15th century, the printing press gave rise to new anxieties, and for several centuries thereafter, printers in Europe were only permitted to operate with the approval of their monarchs. Things may seem to be completely different now, but a deep dive into the political economy of the book will make it clear we are still operating with a command-and-control version of knowledge. The colony may have come and gone, but knowledge remains a thing produced in the centre – and consumed in the periphery.

    Wikipedia’s lamentable dependency on the book, continuing in this long, grand, and incredibly racist European tradition, is why we in the periphery are avid consumers of Wikipedia, but not producers. Publishing is a system of power, and so is Wikipedia. You look at Wikipedia, and think, hey, it’s on the Internet, it’s made by volunteers, it’s got pop singers and porn stars, anyone can contribute, it must be revolutionary. But don’t be fooled: it’s merely the old system of power, wrapped in a dazzling gauze of technological emancipation and repackaged with a benevolent liberal bow. Don’t take my word for it. Instead, take just one of Wikipedia’s own published statistics: there are more producers of Wikipedia in the Netherlands (population 17 million) than the entire continent of Africa (population 1.2 billion).

    Are you still connected to the Wikimedia Foundation?

    I’m not. I served on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation from 2006 to 2018. I quit, or more accurately, I certainly quit a board that I’m not certain exists, since the Advisory Board has been in a Kafkaesque limbo for some years. I did some good during my term, as well as some things that did not turn out well. I’m proud of helping start the South African chapter, which is flourishing, and not so proud of helping the Indian chapter come into existence, since it blew up in a hot cloud of incompetence and ineptitude. I played a part  in pushing for the Wikimedia Foundation to directly intervene in stimulating producers in India, Brazil, and the Middle East, and I’m glad to have played an early role in pushing the Wikimedia movement to recognize affiliations from broad groups of people, like Catalan speakers, not just those from sovereign states.

    In the end, however, as a result of my work in India, and especially as a result of my work on oral citations, the trolling and harassment from other Wikipedians simply became too much. The hostility was insane: every discussion, every interaction online, was toxic. At the same time, the Wikimedia Foundation decided it had not much use for me. I’m not sure which was worse, being attacked by the community, or being ignored by the Foundation 🙂 Either way, I knew it was time to go.

    How has Wikipedia’s citation policy/strategy changed since the conceptualization of this project?

    The short answer is not one bit. In fact, it’s moved in the other direction, with the rules becoming even tighter. Wikipedia is now unapologetically hostile. If you came to Wikipedia in 2001 and put in some text, it would stay, as long as it was reasonable, and other Wikipedians would work with you to improve it, by adding citations and so on. Try that today, and you’ll be shut down immediately, then flamed, and then shamed into never contributing again. Every new contributor is essentially treated as a hostile vandal or a paid public relations agent until proven otherwise. Of course, it doesn’t help that many new contributors are, indeed, hostile vandals and paid public relations agents. It’s an impossible problem, and the encyclopedia anyone can contribute to has made no attempts to solve it, save for aiming a giant blowtorch at anyone who tries to contribute.

    But it’s not all bad. A few good things came out of the oral citations project. The first is a set of independent initiatives that sprung up, to work along similar lines. Peter Gallert, an academic in Namibia, is working on a project to bring indigenous knowledge to Wikipedia. In San Francisco, Anasuya Sengupta, Siko Bouterse and Adele Vrana, three former Wikimedia Foundation staffers, have launched a grand and exciting initiative to remake Wikipedia. (One of their campaigns is to pry Wikipedia away from the hands of young men, and reverse the giant tide of sexism within; you can help them by contributing images of women to Wikipedia). The second nice thing is that the Wikimedia Foundation finally seems to have figured it out: a key plank in its new strategy is to “focus…efforts on the knowledge and communities that have been left out by structures of power and privilege.” Given that it’s the community that decides policy, not the Foundation, I’m curious to see where this goes.

    How are you expanding on the project at the moment?

    Having burnt only some of my bridges with Wikipedia so far, I’m now working on ways to burn all my bridges with the community. I’m kidding. Seriously, though, I’m writing a short account of being the brown guy in the ring. I think Wikipedia has got away with intolerable amounts of racism, sexism and hostility just because most people only see it from the outside, slot it as a ‘good thing’, and don’t ever find out about what is going on inside.

    Having said all that, I should make a confession: I love Wikipedia. I loved it the moment I first saw it, and I’ll always love it. To me, Wikipedia is the public park of the Internet; a refuge from the relentless shopping-mall the Internet has turned into, the brave little non-profit in the oligopolistic dystopia that is our online landscape. When Wikipedia is good, it’s wonderful. When Wikipedians are good, they’re great. So I’m going to stick around for a bit, shout from the sidelines, and see if it has any effect. It’s ironic I spend so much time criticizing Wikipedia, because all I’ve ever wanted, really, is to be allowed inside. I’m not sure it’s entirely rational to want to enter a park run by confused white supremacists, but I’ve been going there for so long, I’ve become quite attached to it. Sure, Wikipedia is a racist, sexist and violent enterprise, but it’s my racist, sexist and violent enterprise, and I’ll figure out a way to deal with it.

    Further reading:

    A push to redefine knowledge at Wikipedia

    Lifting the lid on a Wikipedia crisis

    The Believer Interview with Achal Prabhala (The Believer)

    Is Wikipedia woke?

    We’re all connected now, so why is the Internet so white & western?

  • Artist and filmmaker Kitso Lynn Lelliott on disrupting knowledge hierarchies

    Artist and filmmaker Kitso Lynn Lelliott on disrupting knowledge hierarchies

    Michel-Rolph Trouillot in his book Silencing the Past: The Power and the Production of History interrogates ideas about the history and pastness, demonstrating how positions of power silence certain voices from History. He points to how oppressive, destructive and inhuman interpretations of people of colour led to colonial powers not being able to imagine histories or a History that could be animated, directed and authored by people of colour.

    The work of Kitso Lynn Lelliott also unpacks the philosophical and ontological constructions of race that emerged during European Imperialism, which resulted in multilayered tools and attitudes for ‘Othering’. One of the most important tool was that of hegemonic colonial languages; language as the foundation of these constructions, as well as what allows for these constructions to continue to have life. In this sense, Lelliott, similar to what Trouillot states, looks at pastness as a position as much as a temporal concept (Trouillot 1995: 15).

    Her solo presentation of a multimedia body of work, titled I was her and she was me and those we might become, was born out her PhD research related to the perpetuation of the idea of “racially marked beings” and how this led to the erasure of knowledges held in diverse languages. This becomes more apparent when one thinks of language as more than sounds for communication. Language carries a particular imaginary of the world, a way to interpret the world and a way to describe the world.

    As a way to speak back to these dominant narratives, Lelliott uses the “language of the ghostly” to gesture towards the presence and absence of omitted knowledges and histories. This is incredibly powerful as it is a reminder of the conscious and active act of silencing, while simultaneously pointing out that the imaginaries, mythologies, memories and multitude of ancestral histories can never be silenced.

    About her installation Lelliott stated that, “It is a gesture to reclaim an agency to articulate the narratives that make us, through dialogue that is always in flux, so they might produce a shape we see fit for ourselves.” In this statement we can directly see interest in voicing from spaces beyond epistemic power, as well as how epistemic articulation that pushes against hegemonic forms of knowledge identification and construction offers avenues to break down these hegemonic practices and knowledge hierarchies. This is particularly relevant in a time when we are thinking about decolonial practices and how they can be played out in real life.

    “. . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands.” (Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past 1995: 153)

  • Strategies for Survival – An Arts Course Countering Histories of Erasure

    Strategies for Survival – An Arts Course Countering Histories of Erasure

    “Reading silences, rereading denials, deciphering edited out material and actively pouring over existent African Studies scholarship about intimacies, erotics, sexualities, pleasure, desire, and friendships is critical. This would avail the skills, methodologies and theories to unmute, unsee, and unlearn the outright erasure of multiple forms of evidence of queerness.” – Stella Nyazi

    Texts lie scattered across a circular table at the WAM café – the rickety legs supporting pages of politicized queer theory. Light leaks in through the double volume windows of the WAM café. Artist Abri de Swardt sits opposite me, describing Strategies for Survival, a seven-week course that he and art historian Nomvuyo Horwitz facilitated at the Wits School of the Arts, University of the Witwatersrand at the end of 2017.

    Samuel Fosso, Self-portrait (1976)

    The course was used as an opportunity to reevaluate and identify failings within the curriculum – locating relevance to the city and the institution in the wake of the Fallist Movement. This was drawn in part from, and in response to, Abri’s engagement with the same body of students during the practice-based Staging Mediums course the previous year. The programme was positioned within the broader framework of Reading the Contemporary. In this instance, reading, was approached from the context of Drag culture, where ‘read’ has come to mean, “to wittily and incisively expose a person’s flaws, often exaggerating or elaborating on them”. Imbedded within this approach is a sense of criticality towards that which ‘the contemporary’ as temporal category delineates, and the blind spots within this designation.

    Lorraine O’Grady, Art Is…. (Woman with Man and Cop Watching) (1983), Performance view, African-American Day Parade, Harlem

    A seminal text in framing Strategies for Survival is Judith Butler’s Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (2009) “Without grievability, there is no life, or, rather, there is something living that is other than life. Instead, ‘there is a life that will never have been lived,’ sustained by no regard, no testimony, and ungrieved when lost. The apprehension of grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of precarious life. Grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of the living being as living, exposed to non-life from the start.”

    The notion of “grievability” is positioned as a signifier of value and persistence in relation to the social hierarchies of class, race, gender, sexuality and ability, inducing which bodies, beliefs and populations matter, and on a differentiated scale, those which are systematically erased. Butler’s text also describes the intersection between precariousness and precarity with regards to human life – positioning the concept of ‘flourishing’ as central to the distinction between living and merely existing. This takes on a more direct level in necropolitics and accountability for lives lost, which locally can be foregrounded in the Marikana Massacre and the recent Life Esidimeni arbitration.

    Akram Zaatari, Anonymous, Studio Shehrazade, Saida, Lebanon, early 1970s. Hashem el Madani

    Strategies for Survival examines various subject positions and modes of socialization disidentifying with the invisibility of normativity and its associated subjectivities of heterosexuality, whiteness and ablebodiedness. José Esteban Muñoz writes in Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999) that,“disidentifications is meant to be descriptive of the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship.”This theoretical framework investigates the confluences of queer bodies, black bodies, impaired bodies, trans bodies, intersex bodies, female bodies, cyborg bodies and non-human bodies as well as the moments of affinity and strategic collectivity between them, while simultaneously being aware of subjective experience and the nuanced levels of systemic violence enacted on and within those subject positions.

    Contemporary art practices are considered through the lens of queer theory, but also from radical black writing, trans–, and disabilities activism, eco-feminist text and indigenous rights texts, and affective modes such as joy, love and rage. Strategies for Survival is framed within post-colonial discourse and explores modes of ‘Africanizing’ the curriculum through the writing of Stella Nyazi, Zethu Matebeni and Nkunzi Nkabinde among others, while interrogating capitalist constructions of time and production – extending into the ‘non’-neutrality of digital space. The vast subject matter and theoretical framing illustrate the importance of approaching pedagogical practice with considered modes of criticality – while promoting platforms for mobilization, resistance and visibility within and beyond the institution.

    “Silence Equals Death” – ACT UP

    * Images from course slide show

    Rafa Esparza, STILL (2012)

     

    Gran Fury, Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do (1989)

     

    Igshaan Adams, Bismilah (2014)

     

    Claude Cahun, Hands (1929)

     

    Alvin Baltrop, The Piers (wreckage) (1976 – 86)

     

    R.I.S.E, #NOCOLONIZERS (2017)
  • 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