Bubblegum Club

Tag: sexuality

  • WYAA // Providing Platforms for the Emergence of Young Artists

    WYAA // Providing Platforms for the Emergence of Young Artists

    Cantilevered concrete extends into a crisply lit tower foregrounding the bright cerulean winter sky. Tire treads mark the intersection of an arterial road, the pulse connecting the suburbs of Johannesburg to the heart of the city. Adjacent, a narrow side street reverberates the sounds of lorries and delivery vans. The bustling sidewalk is grounded by rectangular forms – interjected by an iron grate ashtray. Indigenous foliage peppers a raised platform of slate stones. This is the corner occupied by The Point of Order.

    The Point of Order operates as a mixed-use project space managed under the exhibitions programme of the Division of Visual Arts at the Wits School of Arts. This year nine students were selected to participate in the Wits Young Artist Award – a prestigious event that aims to provide an exhibition platform for emerging artists. Notions of inherited legacy, gender, sexuality and mapping space were explored throughout the show.

    Allyssa Herman is interested in the way knowledge is produced around the kitchen table and domestic space. A kitsch ceramic canine inherited from her grandmother is central to the work A Shrine for my Bitch. “A shrine for my bitch, it’s just that. A shrine for my bitch. My bitch is an embodiment of me, an embodiment of the woman who have passed, who’s ideals live in me…This bitch has been sitting in my grandmother’s home watching me all my life, she deserves a shrine, she deserves to be praised. My bitch is both dead and alive. She is that bitch. We are that bitch. Bow down bitches!” The shrine, arranged with an abundance of fake flowers, family portraits, candles and doilies pay homage to Allyssa’s matriarchal lineage – the veil between life and death.

    Artworks by Lebogang Mabusela

    “I hate doilies. There is something very suspicious about the cleaning, masking, covering, and the needing to impress that comes with being a woman. The passing down of these doilies happens in those moments when mama’ tells me gore ngwanyana o kama moriri; ngwanyana ga a tlhabe mashata; ngwanyana o dula so, ga a tlaralle” says runner-up Lebogang Mabusela. Lebogang’s response to these crocheted signifiers of femininity and ‘black womanhood’ is to reimagine them through a series of monotype prints. “Doilies are used to conceal flawed and plain surfaces in a more decorative way. They are about dignity, integrity and keeping a seductive, elegant and glamorous home even when things are just falling apart slightly, because Abantu bazothini?” Her work tenderly addresses the transference of societal projections on paper.

    Cheriese Dilrajh also engages the domestic sphere in her work. “A space can feel foreign to you even if it is your home. It can make you question your existence.” Her installation of suspended sarees adorned with paper plants and a video projection of “alien plants of the Internet” challenges tradition and the notion of inherited culture. “People can be thought of as plants. There are indigenous and alien, each determined which is which by the space it is allowed to flourish and survive in. Plants are interesting to me as they sometimes appear to embody human characteristics. My grandmother would also often transfer plants from her house to our garden.” Her interests extend into decolonising the self  – “postcolonial is not only a theory, it is lived and embodied. It is everywhere, and identity becomes distorted and confusing, informing our growth.”

    Installation piece by Cheriese Dilrajh

    Dominique Watson‘s haunting bed installation is a response to a project created by the SADF during apartheid at the time of the Border Wars. Conscripts classified as homosexual or ‘deviant’ were sent to Ward 22 of the Military Hospital in Voortrekkerhoogte. In this ward they were subject to the ‘conversion’ procedures of electroshock therapy and chemical castration. Dominique discovered documentation of these atrocities in GALA‘s archive – including accounts from patients as well as their families. She describes this, “history as a haunting” whereby the medical gaze approached the queer body as one riddled with disease. The red bedsheet bound around the military-style cot has been stained with institutional ink – signifying the oppressive nature of the establishment.

    For his provocative work, Oratile Konopi collaborated with Hip-hop artist Gyre. Oratile’s piece is a visual response to the musician’s single entitled Eat My Ass. “We went about creating an artwork with its own narrative. The narrative of a dinner date in which you would get to know someone, going through two courses but the desert not being eaten rather alluding to the idea that something else is being ‘eaten’.” Oratile explores notions of masculinities central to the identity of black men in his artistic practice – often employing music as a device to create a point of accessibility. The installation offers an opportunity for the audience to engage with the works in a tangible form – adding to what would otherwise be limited to digital interface. Oratile and Gyre use this platform to, “speak on the issues related to gender and sexualities present in the music sonically and extending it visually. We chose the LP format because it speaks to a different moment in time. Complicating the idea that multiple sexualities are something only present in the contemporary moment and did not exist in the past.”

    Installation piece by Dominique Watson

    Framing- white- female- emerging artist- my eyes- camera- images- physical collage- print- in my mind- digital- photoshop- film strips- chance- abstract- representational- titles- When You Swipe Your ABSA Card- overlapping- labour- different people’s labours- my labour- making sense of my surroundings. Sarah-Jayde Hunkin locates herself within the city. Her processed-based work is centred around the transference of images and collaging experience. Frustrated with the lack of female representation in linocut printmaking, Sarah-Jayde is interested in the perception of ‘aggressive’ mark-making. Her print combines techniques of visualising negative space as well as delicate and fine marks.

    Kira De Cavalho‘s MAPPING SPACES articulates locations topographically. The combination of paint and chalk is used to mark a fabric surface. The suspended map spans. “between my childhood homes (Mulbarton, Rosettenville and Kensington). The graphic threaded floor plans overlay the map and symbolise personal dynamics within my living spaces. These dynamics and associated traumas are expressed through different coloured cotton thread and linear layout.”

    ‘MAPPING SPACES’ by Kira De Cavalho

    Nishay Phenkoo‘s Matrimonium study after The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even engages with its implicit Duchampian reference and the union of personified forms. “The deep enveloping gaze of the easels consumed within each other offers insight to the complexities of the marriage, its off-white veil of dust elegantly poised atop the head of its recipient awaiting a hopeful life of bliss and happiness.” Hymn Die Irae by Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner reverberates through the space while, “The recipients deeply intoxicated by the other lost in a subliminal bondage under the warm pink light imbued with parallelisms to the hand of god.”

    This year’s winner, Kundai Moyo, explores issues of consent within the photographic practice. “I became curious about scale and the illusion of intimacy and that often lends itself to things that are small enough to fit in the palm of our hands, the psychological effects of this attachment and whether or not presenting something on such a small scale diminishes some of the problematic notions attached to it.” Her sculptural works entitled, Photo Albums: Vol. I & II are two tiny velvet-covered hand-bound books each containing a photographic series captured in Mozambique last year. Many of the images feature the human subject going about the doldrums of daily life. After producing the series, Kundai contemplated the moral dilemma of exploiting the image of strangers and the inequal power dynamic inherent in photography. She decided to, “construct a mechanism that would allow for viewers to peer into the lives of these strangers in a way that did not leave them exposed to the essentialist scrutiny that often comes with the unanimous viewing by a large audience.” Her photo albums attempt to create a tender moment of intimacy in the interactive piece.

    The exhibition runs until the 7th of August.

    ‘Photo Albums: Vol. I & II’ by Kundai Moyo
    Artwork by Oratile Konopi and Gyre
    Artwork by Sarah-Jayde Hunkin
  • 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.

  • ‘Close Encounters’ // A group show exploring the multiplicity of intimacy by SMITH Gallery

    ‘Close Encounters’ // A group show exploring the multiplicity of intimacy by SMITH Gallery

    “Intimacy is too often confined with matters of love; yet the word belongs more to trust, to faith. It denotes an act of revelation found in the simple gesture of sharing; bringing that which was previously hidden out from the shadows and into the light. In this exhibition, the artworks chosen explore intimacy in both their content and their form. They touch on universal themes – like birth and love and death – but also on other more singular intimacies; personal histories, dreams and desires. The works reflect on self- intimacy, experienced in solitude, and the intimacy shared between us, be it romantic or platonic, familial or fleeting. There is, too, intimacy of familiar spaces, spaces we inhabit in both the world and in our minds. And then, there is the intimacy of objects, and our relationships to them; a cherished photograph, clothes left lying on the floor, a coffee half drunk, now gone cold, a letter hidden in a bottom drawer. And always an implied subject, who has held and touched these objects, so that each becomes a metonym for something, or someone, else.” – reads the introductory paragraph of the essay on the group show titled The Art of Intimacy by Lucienne Bestall.

    Curated by SMITH’s own Jana Terblanche, Close Encounters, “…encompasses many intimacies. Intimacy between friends, family and even yourself. An ‘encounter’ extends beyond romantic love, and opens the show up to a certain type of multiplicity…” she tells me in response to the exhibition title.

    Terblanche explains further that, “The curatorial strategy seeks to make connections, and guide the audience to experience many versions of intimacy, but not to be too definitive in fixing its meaning.”

    ‘Looking in’ by Banele Khoza

    Interpretation, voyeuristic in its nature, peeks into private scenes in the works of Olivié Keck, Daniel Nel and Banele Khoza. As the viewer uncovers that which is hidden, they are confronted with the image of a sleeping woman with a bloodstain forming between her legs; with figures in a bedroom – dressing or undressing. A nude man cradles his foot in another work. As Bestall points out, the human shapes portrayed on these canvases appear to be unaware of their viewer, unaware of being watched. They are “…absorbed in their own worlds and insensible to ours. From this vantage, we become privileged viewers; seeing yet unseen.”

    Boy in Pool and Creepy Noodle by Strauss Louw presents as photographic montages reflecting on ideas surrounding sensuality and sexuality. The images’ quality can be compared to a fever dream, confused, stripped down. A recurring element in both frames is that of water. Water which is fluid and evokes connotations around spiritual cleanliness, the metaphorical washing away of sin; a baptism that promises new life, a new beginning. The images that reflect one another and in turn speak to one another show an intimacy that extends beyond photographic paper. The signifier, pool noodles and topless male torsos, signify more than the visual cues the artist brings to the fore. Bestall writes, “For him, the gesture of photographing is itself an act of intimacy; the silent communion between the subject and artist shared for only the briefest moment.”

    ‘Creepy Noodle’ by Strauss Louw

    Moments of grave intimacy equally take hold in this group show appearing as recollections of space lost, contemplations on censorship, erasure and that which is muffled. A weapon uncovered from the quite recesses of a grandmother’s bed.

    Returning to the intimacy of childhood, Thandiwe Msebenzi, Sitaara Stodel and Morné Visagie use film, collage and photographs to convey their meaning. Loss, longing and distance oozing from each pigment.

    ‘Unoma xabela ngezembe’ by Thanidwe Msebenzi

    Tapping into the darker avenues of the twisted mind, Michaela Younge and Stephen Allwright craft peculiar scenes of nightmarish fantasy. Younge’s work made from merino wool and felt, bring together eroticism, violence, sensuality and abjection. In this world of felt imagination nude figures, skulls, a doll’s head, the American Gothic and a lawnmower coexist on the same material plane.

    The intimacy of banal objects is considered by artists Gitte Möller and Fanie Buys. Buys’ Unknown Couple at their Wedding (muriel you’re terrible) is a painting of a found image depicting a bride and groom about to cut into their wedding cake. The familiarity of the scene is nostalgic as it is found as such in endless family photo albums.

    ‘Leda and the Handsome Glück’ by Michaela Younge

    Pairing the personal with the universal Amy Lester uses a monotype of a faceless woman that draws parallels with the Venus of Willendorf and other objects and images of fertility. Alongside hangs a photograph of the artist’s birth. This iteration of familial intimacy explores birth and the archetypal Mother figure.

    The viewer is moved from private bedroom scenes to depictions of violence, from a clear subject to an underlying layer of meaning, invited to engage with the scale of works, the theme of intimacy follows distinct threads. “Yet the works exhibited all share the same vulnerability. Something previously hidden is revealed; a secret spoken aloud, a memory described, a dark dream recalled. Such is intimacy, a word bound not to love, nor to the erotic. But rather, a word that denotes a certain knowledge, a privileged insight into the private life of another – another figure, another object, another place. Where some intimacies are lasting, others are only momentary; where some are apparent, others are not.” Bestall ends off.

    ‘Unknown Couple at their Wedding (muriel you’re terrible)’ by Fanie Buys

    The interdisciplinary group show Close Encounters will run from the 4 July – 28 July 2018.

    Join SMITH Gallery on a walkabout of the show on Saturday the 21st July at 11h00.

    Exhibiting artists include: Stephen Allwright, Fanie Buys, Grace Cross, Claire Johnson, Jeanne Gaigher, Jess Holdengarde, Olivié Keck, Banele Khoza, Amy Lester, Strauss Louw, Sepideh Mehraban, Nabeeha Mohamed, Gitte Möller, Thandiwe Msebenzi, Daniel Nel, Gabrielle Raaff, Brett Charles Seiler, Sitaara Stodel, Marsi van de Heuvel, Anna van der Ploeg, Morné Visagie, Michaela Younge

    ‘The Birth’ by Amy Lester
    ‘she looks at you as if looking for herself’ by Jess Holdengarde
    ‘Tonal Tears’ by Jess Holdengarde
    ‘But if it doesn’t have a garden we can’t keep the dog?’ by Sitaara Stodel
  • Delphine Diallo’s ‘Women of New York’ – empowering women

    Delphine Diallo’s ‘Women of New York’ – empowering women

    Delphine Diallo, currently based in Brooklyn, New York, is a French Senegalese photographer and visual artist. Completing her studies at the Académie Charpentier School of Visual Art in Paris she worked in the music industry as a graphic designer, special effect motion artist and video editor before moving to New York to explore her own practice.

    Combining her artistry with activism Delphine momentums various possibilities for the empowerment of women, cultural minorities and youth forward. The mediums in which she practices include both analogue and digital photography, illustration and collage, virtual reality and 3D printing.

    Her arresting imagery acts to challenge societal norms and champion women with mythological, anthropological, sexuality, identity and race explorations.

    Delphine’s project Women of New York makes use of classic portraiture to create visibility. For this project, she photographed women and girls of New York which was compiled into a book format and featured 111 females (a symbol of oneness).

    For this project, the artist used the method of blind casting via Instagram posts and having her assistant handle the model calls in order to rule out discrimination and limiting women and girls who want to participate from forming a part of the project.

    “I feel like if I select women, then I’m discriminating against other women who want to participate. I’m not going to do that. So, my assistant handles the model calls I post on Instagram, and 30 women might reply, and because they’ve expressed interest, they are part of this project.

    I want to give each woman who has felt defeated, unprotected, ignored or degraded, a new light to shine on her brilliance and beauty. And, for the women who have always felt empowered, despite society dismissing her in the workplace, educational institutions, media outlets, and even in her home, I want Women of New York to illuminate her strength in ways she may never have imagined.” she expressed in an interview with 99u.

    Delphine’s images are strong and show these women and girls in a confident, powerful light. Her project has created visibility and a face that speaks to what it means to be a female in New York today. Her work holds power in that it celebrates beauty and is a clear indication that womanhood cannot be seen as an embodiment of one way of being.

  • Reflecting on queer experiences through movement and imagery

    Reflecting on queer experiences through movement and imagery

    UK photographer Angela Dennis teamed up with dancer and choreographer Llewelyn Mnguni, the result of which is a series of images that aim to visually represent their lived understandings of gender and sexuality as a spectrum. Zoo Lake was their chosen location, attracted to the vibrant colours that were brought to the basketball courts near the lake by local artists.

    Their collaboration became a moment of exchange and a moment of solidarity, sharing more than just the sound of the shutter and angelic poses. Angela and Llewelyn shared with one another their experiences as queer people of colour, coming from different sides of the world. This intimacy comes across in Llewelyn’s openness in the images, and Angela’s treatment of each image.

    For Angela, photography offers an avenue for identity exploration, focusing particularly on the “black body, black aesthetics and queer identities – that of my own and those I encounter.” She does this by presenting the every day, the intimate, individual self-care practices, style, social groups and home life. “My general approach has been an attempt to subvert beauty standards in the west that favour whiteness by producing work that celebrates and beautifies black people, as well as work that looks for visual signifiers of common cultural practices,” Angela adds.

    Angela’s interest in Johannesburg sparked from attending AFROPUNK in the city in December. Curious about the possibilities the festival offers for black transnational exchange, Angela met a number of creatives, including Llewelyn while staying in Johannesburg, and was keen to accelerate the momentum of creative engagement.

    As a dancer and choreographer working for Dance Factory, Llewelyn uses this medium as a way to share the untold stories of the LGBTI+ community, “because I find that in dance there is a lack of representation for the stories and lives of this community.”

    Reflecting on the series, Llewelyn states that, “As a black queer artist I think it is imperative to capture moments of one’s existence in the social climate we find ourselves in. Self representation, self love and pride are what these photos should inspire and evoke. It is also important to me to continue to document our lives as this inspires generations to come.”

    This process was not simply about Angela taking photographs of Llewelyn, but a partnership of making images, a kind of co-creation that mixed together their exploration of identity.

    Continuing Llewelyn’s train of thought, Angela concluded by offering this reflection, “Being queer I am part of a community that resides in a liminal space on the margins of society, something Llewellyn and I can identify with. Our work here, in its various mediums seems to generally be about understanding the communal spaces we reside in and forging new connections. Blackness itself encompasses a multitude of experiences, politics and cultural production globally. And as we continue to rise and take up space, it is imperative that we keep fostering this learning and understanding, so that as authors we create ourselves from a position of strength. I think this translates in the images through the grace and strength of Llewelyn’s free movement, he literally uses his body to take up public space. The bold colours in the court flooring become abstract flashes of colour and light, nodding to the ‘colour’ of queerness. Transnational exchange means strengthened collective power and an infinite network of peers to learn from, to lift up and celebrate.”

  • Using allegory as a conceptual and visual device with photographer Nydia Blas

    Using allegory as a conceptual and visual device with photographer Nydia Blas

    Artist Nydia Blas uses photography, collage, books and video in her exploration of lived experience, history and the limits of social constructs – specifically from her point of view as a Black woman and mother. Her work also touches on unpacking sexuality as well as understandings and expressions of intimacy.

    Using allegory as a conceptual and visual device in her photography, Blas webs together signifiers and articulations of value, power and circumstance through the Black feminine lens. She presents counter narratives, destabilizing stereotypes, and her work becomes testimonies of alternative spaces and identities created by the people she photographs. In doing so she delicately maps out the relationship between resilience and resistance.

    She is a recipient of the 2018 Light Work Grant, a photography program that supports artists working in Central New York. Her work is also featured in the book MFON: A Journal of Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, a commemorative publication that is committed to representing a collective voice of women photographers of African descent with the inaugural issue featuring 100 women photographers across the African diaspora.

    Her series The Girls Who Spun Gold was inspired by a number of factors, the most prominent being a group of women she met while working at a community centre before embarking on her MFA degree. Blas feels that their meeting was a serendipitous moment, as at the time she had just become a single mother of two children, and the women she met were at the age when Blas last remembers feeling a child. The decision to photograph these women came from the desire to maintain a connection, but soon into the process she felt the need to include herself in the series. “The result is a series of images that work to complicate the notion of what it means to be a girl, a teenager, and a mother. I want the subjects to reclaim themselves, for themselves. I want the images to speak to this intricate process that is painful, messy, beautiful, joyful, etc,” Blas expressed in an interview with Strange Fire Collective.

    Her latest series, Whatever You Like, sees Blas capture the people she photographs with an honesty that makes the viewer feel connected to each person. The work aims to unfold the ways that young women of colour learn to reclaim themselves for their own gratification, attempting to undo seeing themselves through the eyes of others. The simplicity of the images creates the feeling that these are moments of reflective self engagement that Blas was invited to monumentalize.

    Through the above mentioned series one can see how Blas takes on moments of transition, learning and reclaiming, allowing the people she photographs to take ownership of the image through their strong presence.

  • STASH CREW’s latest EP is the electronic soundtrack for a gender fluid future

    STASH CREW’s latest EP is the electronic soundtrack for a gender fluid future

    The future is gender fluid. Probably. I mean, if there is a future. With the current climate, who knows how much longer we’ll inhabit this planet for? What I do know is that more people these days are starting to open up to the idea that sexuality is a spectrum and so is gender, which bodes well for a less binary future. STASH CREW’s GENDERFLUIDZ, as you can probably tell by the title, is a jacked up electronic soundtrack for that future.

    Right off the bat, we’re greeted with a booty popping opener called Pop (Dat) which I can only describe as Smack My Bitch up in a washing machine of bass. It’s a fun opener that gives you a solid idea of what you’re in for over the next 7 songs. You’re in for is a queer as fuck retro-futuristic rap-rave jol. Think Die Antwoord, but with less cultural appropriation and more lyrics about women eating pussy.

    “The realities of living as a queer person in South Africa are brutal. We are inspired by the transformative and inclusive possibilities of queer culture and how we can counteract the challenges and violence that queer people face on a daily basis,” STASH CREW explain in their press release, “We want more queer positive, sex positive people celebrating themselves and their wants and desires – and dancing every damn day”.

    GENDERFLUIDZ will definitely get you dancing, and it truly is 2 queer kids from Jozi celebrating themselves, with touches from Umlilo, HLASKO and Schall Regall. Whyt Lyon, Phayafly have a close working relationship with Umlilo. In 2017 they toured Brazil and Germany with Umlilo as part of their ‘Queer Intergalatic Alliance’ collaborative project, and Umlilo also features on their bonus song and video for GENDERFLUIDZ, Mad as Hell.

    Photography by Corrina Mehl

  • Multimedia artist Rehema Chachage on rituals of survival and subversion

    Multimedia artist Rehema Chachage on rituals of survival and subversion

    Multimedia artist from Dar es Salaam, Rehema Chachage uses video and sculptural installations as her chosen mediums to communicate her own experiences, and those of other women, casting a light on rituals of survival and subversion.

    After her father passed away she began to interrogate ideas around inheritance in Tanzanian societies, seeing the most valuable inheritance from her father was his intellectual work. Her father, a University of Dar es Salaam sociology professor worked briefly in South Africa and had some struggles which he expressed an extended essay. This resonated with her while she was studying towards her fine art degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at UCT. She felt like a stranger, an outsider while living in Cape Town. Her earlier work channeled these feelings of social alienation, allowing her to critically analyse themes related to identity and (up)rootedness.

    The work she has produced since graduating looks at rituals as valuable tools for reading into social norms and tensions, closely examining those that speak to women’s identities, gender relations and subversion.

    ‘Mshanga’

    A powerful series of works was born out of her time spent in Gorée island in Senegal where she came across a text that explained how pregnant slaves were punished. “They were given 29 lashes but before they were whipped the slave owners would dig a hole for them to rest their pregnant bellies in. So whilst they were delivering their punishment, they were also protecting future slave power. This stood out for me. The 29 lashes is not really a ritual but I see it as an adapted ritual, because it was an everyday reality for these woman,” Chachage explained in an interview with Urban Africans. This, along with the experiences of her mother and grandmother, inspired the idea to explore 29 ways women can use different females rituals rooted in Africa to survive and subvert power in patriarchal societies.

    Mshanga produced in 2012 is an example of this work. Delving into the nuances in gender, generation and poverty, it tells the story of her great grandmother Orupa Mchikirwa. As a woman who had to look after many children and grandchildren, she would often sacrifice her own food, leaving her feeling hungry. To avoid being consumed by her hunger she would tightly wrap a cloth called ‘Mshanga’ around her, squeezing her stomach.

    “…the stomach, for our bodies, is the centre of equilibrium, and normally loosens up when we are hungry. So, in order to retain strength (when hungry), it helps to have it tightly and securely tied. Traditionally, in Tanzania, women tie ‘Mshanga’ (as ritual) around their tummies when they are bereaved. And, historically, in some traditional African societies, the rite of passage from boyhood to manhood, involves a ritual that simulates warfare. Boys enter into the forest through a gate, expected to return through the same gate as men carrying with them ‘the secrets of the forest’ in which one of them is sacrificed. In the meantime, every woman with a son in the forest has to tie a ‘Mshanga’ around their bellies, hoping her son ‘returns’. If their sons return home safe, they will have a celebration with singing and cheering whereby the ‘Mshanga’ is untied. If the forest ‘swallows’ her son, the ‘Mshanga’ continues to prop the mother’s tummy as it helps the forest maintain the silence.”

    This explanation of her work from her website connects the series to her exploration of rituals for survival and subversion used by women. It also highlights the significance of the mshanga being the cloth used by her great grandmother, carrying with it a heaviness as a sign of suffering.

    Chachage’s work PART III: NANKONDO (2017) created in collaboration with her mother, who provides textual responses to her visuals, speaks to her interest in intergenerational conversations, as well as looking at sexuality and gender. “In this work, we explore African spirituality, following a story of my great grandmother, Nankondo, whose mother disappeared a long time ago, and she is believed to have been captured and taken into slavery. The religious fanatics in her village believed that she is to blame for her own capture, her being a woman of ‘low morals’ due to the fact that she used to sell beer to men until late hours,” Chachage explains in her artist statement. The work existed as an installation, a shrine created for Nankondo, made up of a video taken during a prayer session, as well as a projection of a letter written by Chachage’s mother on to a bath filled with water, surrounded by candles. “The work as a whole tries to make sense of the self-loath and spiritual abyss as displayed by modern day religion.”

    Chachage’s choice to explore 29 different rituals performed by women is a subversion of its reference, speaking to the resilience that women embody, making their stories prominent narratives in history (herstory).

    Check out Chachage’s website as well as her Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to keep up with her work.

  • Photographer Juliana Kasumu // the image as a device for educating

    Photographer Juliana Kasumu // the image as a device for educating

    British-Nigerian photographer Juliana Kasumu combines cultural research and imagery to critically engage with concepts related to Africa and its diaspora, Black identity, and her own identity as a British-Nigerian woman of colour. Through her photographs she takes on the role of an educator, presenting cultural histories that she was not taught or did not have access to while growing up.

    The policing of Black women’s hair and sexuality have been strong conceptual foundations for her work, accompanied by personal memories. The series ‘Irun Kiko’ with its visual potency shares with viewers the symbolism within African hairstyles. The title refers to the Nigerian method for hair threading, originating with the Yoruba. This project looks into the ways in which West African women conform or rebel against European beauty standards. It also intends to inform viewers of the history behind these hairstyles, which are often taken out of their cultural context, alienating them from what gives them significance.

    As a continuation from ‘Irun Kiko‘, Kasumu released her series ‘From Moussor to Tignon‘ which shares the value ascribed to various forms of head wraps. At a deeper level she unpacks how they can be intimately connected to personal identity, linking status, class, and culture. Kasumu’s photographs reflect her narration of the origins of this global phenomena, piecing together the bridge between traditional culture and contemporary fashion.

    Check out her website to see how her latest project ‘#hairdiaries‘ unfolds.

  • Meghan Daniels – The Photographer capturing honest emotion through the people closest to her

    Meghan Daniels – The Photographer capturing honest emotion through the people closest to her

    Candid intimacy. Grit. Snapshots of personal memories. Longing. These are the descriptions that come to mind when looking at the photographic repertoire of Meghan Daniels.

    Meghan Daniels is a Capetonian photographer whose work falls largely under the wing of documentary photography. Regarding her camera as an extension of herself, Meghan does not view what she photographs as subject matter, but instead a compilation of experiences taking the tangible shape of a photograph. “Basically, I guess I don’t care too much for photography but rather a sense of what I interpret, to be honest,” she expresses in an interview with DEAD TOWN zine.

    Meghan’s photographic practice began as a visual diary of sorts as she is drawn to capturing those closest to her – herself, friends, family, as well as memory inducing spaces. She articulates further that her visual diary acts as a way of capturing her feelings which touch on themes related to sexuality, gender issues, relationships, intimacy, love, pain, mental health and recovery. She sees photography as a mirror of herself and the world around her. “When people ask what I do, it’s difficult to say I’m a ‘photographer’ and that I ‘photograph’.”

    Photography has acted as a medium to facilitate processing the more difficult aspects of life for her. In her personal projects, Meghan captures moments as they unfold with the passing of time. In documentary projects her approach is grounded in research, participatory research methods which including the person/persons the project are centred around, as well as self-reflexivity which plays an integral function. Her commercial practice foregrounds certain visual signifiers that are a trademark of her eye, namely honesty, vulnerability, intimacy and grittiness.

    Meghan works as a photographer and cinematographer in a professional capacity. Her go-to camera arsenals are her Contax point and shoot as well as her medium format Mamiya. She is never devoid of inspiration. She finds it in the work of fellow South African creatives, areas seen while driving and the small details in life such as broken, flickering light bulbs just to name a few. But as is the case with most artists, feelings of melancholy also lend inspiration – trauma, heartbreak and so forth. Meghan often uses her practice to heal her own pain.

    Images of honesty and true emotion. Real people and real events. Meghan Daniels’ practice tugs on the heartstrings as her candid style is one that projects authenticity and the real nature in which she photographs those close to her makes one feel as though you know them or can identify with the feeling they convey.

  • In Bed With Nico Athene – a consideration of the body and embodied labour as an aesthetic

    In Bed With Nico Athene – a consideration of the body and embodied labour as an aesthetic

    Nico Athene, artist-cum-former-stripper-cum-filmmaker is reminding us that the glass ceiling is far from broken. She represents a new generation of ‘disrupter’ – as a queer figure, a female figure, a sexed figure, a bodied figure – notions of space, form, gender, sex, objecthood and the abject are foregrounded. The bed, a space of intimacy, rest, solitude – becomes Get In My Bed – and Athene ‘publics’ the private. The contemporary female artist always endeavours, always competes. So, we allow ourselves to relish in our discomfort, as we snuggle into the duvet. I was lucky enough to ask Athene a few questions regarding her practice, and how the binaries of consent/transact/covert/overt begin to muddle in this work.

    Image courtesy of Nico Athene

    It seems a large part of your work engages with the notion of transactional and consensual sex. In many ways conflating the world of art with the sex industry disrupts the boundaries of both and makes us consider as the viewer what is transactional and what is consensual. Inviting fellow artists into your bed is an interesting disruption of this. Can you maybe elaborate on your decision to create this collision?

    Sex work is often very consciously performative, and in this way, it is an aesthetic practice. If we don’t recognise it as such it’s because of economic and patriarchal class norms working as a form of censorship, deciding what is or isn’t ‘aesthetic’ and therefore legitimate practice/bodies/work in contrast to the taboo/illegitimate. These norms also enforce economies of access.

    With regards to the ‘transactional’ vs. ‘consensual’ the idea that these two things are necessarily separate is a myth that works to police female and queer bodies and their labour/worth and draws on the previous point to suggest that those who do it are not ’empowered’ or ‘conscious’.

    As femmes we all do sex work every day in forms that are less obvious, and often less conscious, to those who do it for a living. It is my experience that in inhabiting this body I am required to do gendered labour and performance in the service of male egos (ie. sex work) just to be treated ‘fairly’ or get anything done, across all the industries I have worked in. The irony of course is, that despite my performance or under performance I will STILL hit a glass ceiling. Keeping everyday sex work invisible serves to maintain this status quo, keeps us performing for free in service of the hetero-patriarchy. Transacting for sex work challenges those who feel entitled to our bodies and sexuality, especially to those who think they should be getting this labour for free. Making it visible means we can know the extent of our embodied and symbolic work and charge for it properly.

    The way we consider and delineate publics and privates is highly moralised, along very normative gendered notions that work to police bodily autonomy, ownership and pleasure, especially if it is femme/queer. The body of a Sex Worker inherently disrupts this. It is a punctum to the bigger debate, a debate that includes the conditions through which we consider art/artwork/art audience vs everyone else.

    Of course the residency in my bed was also a symbolic transaction – of my intimacy/spectacle/proximity/idea in exchange for the cultural capital of the artists present. It was a way of drawing attention to the aesthetic potential of the embodied labour that is put on me by society, that I hyperbolise, and as an early intervention, a way of canonising myself out of the taboo and into the role of ‘artist’. A reversal in agency of the ‘artist-muse’ dialectic.

    Most recently you showed at Kalashnikovv. How was this experience different from when the residency was at home in Cape Town, and how does the gallery space differ in terms of how this work was read?

    It was of course very different for many reasons, each space has its own set of established semiotics to do with transactionality and the body, the artist and art object, so it was an important evolution of the public/private queering. What made the greatest impact on me were the oversights related to being in the gallery space – as a body, holding this position and occupying this space – I became aware of cracks which have a lot to do with the intersections of how these spaces are run and for whom and whose comfort–and whose embodied and psychological safety and enjoyment. The fact that the bathrooms were in another building with no light or security or soap, for example. Or that some people felt they could just walk into the space and photograph me without my consent. I was also violently sexually harassed on leaving the space by someone who had been at the installation. These were not things I had necessarily considered either, even being in this body, before being in the space, so it was a learning curve.

    Have you had hostile reactions to your work?

    I’m not sure what that means. I have had threatening engagements around it. Like the harassment outside the gallery. And I have had male artists take advantage of it or try moralise it under the guise of care. One of them was in my bed as part of the residency. He is very well known and makes a lot of money off his work, photographing strangers without their consent – strangers who will never see the money that he makes off their images. I’m not sure if this is wrong, just worth noting. The agreement for him spending time in my bed and photographing me was that I would own the photographs. I was after all the instigator, conceptualiser and director of the ‘work’. He said up front that he was interested in the project because he was interested in photographing me in this role, and that he wanted to fuck me. I said he could do the former, but that I would not promise the latter, just that he could spend a night in my bed and we’d see what happened. I didn’t fuck him, although he tried the next morning while I was half asleep – its own trauma of course – and then persisted during breakfast when I had to also listen to him go on and on about how my project would be stronger if I had sex with all the participants and that he didn’t get the problem because it was ‘just a fuck’. In the end he sent me a single photograph, and when I asked who would sign it, he said we were no longer going with the idea that I was the artist.

    He didn’t respond when I emailed him to clarify the agreement, although I did hear through the grapevine that he was still bemoaning the fact that I didn’t fuck him. I’m not sure if it was a hostile reaction, more an expansion or illumination of the work and the dynamics and positions that it challenges. I am interested in how typical art models and the laws that support them view and maintain certain subjectivities and give or take away agency by determining how and what we view as the ‘art object’ vs the ‘body of the artist’, or just ‘the artist’. And of course, this reflects entirely on ownership and access and economy. Another, very famous TED talker and MOMA exhibitor who befriended me in the USA, kept suggesting I try make art from my ‘centre’ rather than my ‘edges’. This of course after he used me as an ear to all his kinky proclivities. When I asked if he’d be a referee for an application for an award of which he was an alumnus, he refused because he thought the project, which was about reconciliation through the body, was from my ‘edges’, and suggested I make work about my family instead.

    Instagram seems to be a major platform on which you reconsider body politics, and the female form. How important do you think platforms like this are for the contemporary women artist? Especially considering it has become almost a site of activism – I am thinking of the Free the Nipple campaign for example.

    I don’t aim to use Instagram as activism, although it allows a certain kind of activism as a platform outside of the institution to show work and generate publics. Having not gone to art school, this function of Instagram is particularly useful to me. Of course, working outside the institution is disruptive of a certain power, and Instagram’s censorship policies work to enforce other kinds of power.

    On the topic of activism, do you consider yourself an activist?

    My primary interest is in what it means to engage in aesthetic practice and the experience of living through/as/with this body. I am interested in how the body and embodied labour IS an aesthetic in its own right, and the terms through which we do and don’t recognise it as such, and what they say about ourselves and society. These terms/experiences are obviously very political, as much as they are intensely personal.

    There has been quite a history of performance artists occupying the gallery space – last year Dawn Kasper took up residency in the Giardini at the Venice Biennale for 6 months, famously, Maria Abromovich spent hours in MOMA for her work The Artist is Present, Tilda Swinton slept in a glass box in MOMA. How do you think your work is different or similar to theirs? Why do you think this is a predominantly female artist phenomenon? Do you see your work as a particularly ‘feminist’ activation?

    I don’t know much about art, I didn’t study it, is my brief and sassy answer. No but really, I’m not sure if it is useful for me to compare my work to other performance artists just because they also use performance or their body. I’m not sure if I think of myself as a performance artist anyway, more an installation artist. I think that there is something to say, however, for the fact that we who do this are trying to escape the violence of language, including for example, the idea that there is a distinct ‘female’ locale. So queers and femmes are probably more driven to forms like this as opposed to cishet males – perhaps because of the language of inherent binaries and the dissociation from the reality of what it means to exist as a body. Explaining your work and experience through language (like I am doing here) perpetuates this violence and detracts from the protest of the action or the discomfort of the situation. It suggests that such things can be organised into accepted and knowable categories where there are subjects and objects, i.e. on patriarchal terms. Or that bodies and their experiences can be ‘known’ through abstractions and ‘reason’ and according to the linearities of language. It is doing the work ‘for’ people who are trying to oppress you by requiring that you explain yourself/and your body, to them, in ways that make them comfortable. Of course, it is a catch 22 as we’ve developed a world where we communicate primarily through language (esp. since the internet), but still it is working on their terms.

    What is the importance of your work in a South African context?

    I don’t know, I just know that it is important to me, in this body, trying to survive by making sense of my experience outside of accepted or known or comfortable categories, and to make the discomfort of the known ones visible.

    And finally, where is your artistic practice leading you in the next few months?

    I am interested in the abject – the stuff outside of categories or language or western notions of linear logic. It is part of my fascination with the reality of what it means to be a body. I think that’s why female bodies threaten male societies – we shed more visibly, we bleed, we birth. And yet all these strangely canonised notions of ‘sexuality’ are built on the abject – hair, nails, eye lashes – things we find disgusting when they are removed from what we perceive as ‘us’ or the object of desire. Yet we are creatures of abject – taking in and expelling food and air and shit and sexual fluids – we are a constant negotiation of the outside and inside worlds. We are permeable inspite of our discomfort with the idea that we are not concrete. So, I am working on this, and showing it, in various contexts. I have made a series of ‘paintings’ which try to disrupt this artistic language too. The majority of western art is notoriously disembodied and cerebral in its attempt to concretise and solidify and make value through permanence – through embodying something outside the realities of our mortality. My paintings are a performance in their own right I guess. I like a painting you can suck and set on fire. I will be showing them and doing a performance as part of group show at Gallery One 11 opening next first Thursday, 3rd of May. Some more exciting things in the near future here and overseas. Not quite confirmed so I’ll keep them quiet for now. You can find out more through my site and Instagram – will try keep them updated!

    Image courtesy of Nico Athene

    Nico is a body of colliding personas and intimate intricacies: of political and personal, immediate and distant, academic and under-qualified. Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, she has two degrees under her formal identity, neither directly related to art. She worked for a number of years in the creative film industry before giving up her ‘real name’ to become a stripper in a Cape Town club. She blames patriarchy and glass ceilings, ‘I figured that if I was going to be sucking cock for cash, I may as well be doing it for proper pay.’ Actually, it’s because she always wanted to be a dancer. It was here that she was born – a stripper/whore whose only mandate is to use artists and their institutions to up her cultural capital: a hyperbolised comment on demonised female stereotypes, sexuality and transactionality that constantly flits between the surreal and mundane.

  • Phile a platform – challenging assumptions about normative sexual desires

    Phile a platform – challenging assumptions about normative sexual desires

    In a world of accessibility, erotica of every nature can be found with a keyword search on the internet. Sexual subcultures cannot be simplified and understood in categorical terms as there are endless multiplicities. It is also true that many of them may be yet unheard of. In the decade that we find ourselves in there is more acceptance of different ways of being in the world. More freedom to express and celebrate one’s sexuality, fetishes and inner desires openly. What does this say about us as a human race and what does it say about our innate desires that are explored in a variety of media from various publishing platforms, to academia to documentary work and erotica?

    One such form of media dedicated to celebrating sexual diversity from around the world is Phile. In the pages of this erotic platform, you can expect to find drag icons, phallic sculptures and buttholes. This journal investigates sexual subcultures, communities and trends. Platforms such as Phile, act as a reflection on sexuality and the complex nature of human desire, thereby breaking down one-dimensional perspectives.

    The founders of the project, Erin Reznick and Mike Feswick, express that it has enabled them to see the connections between larger socio-political, cultural and economic trends. What they find the most intriguing about Phile is unpacking the way in which people reveal their desires. They then attempt to understand the human sociology behind it.

    What differentiates Phile in comparison to the vast amount of other disruptive sex platforms such as Working It (a platform where sex workers can discuss their industry openly), is that it invites contributors to write about their personal experiences. The founders of the journal believe that this method avoids sensationalist reporting and aids in creating more significant and authentic narratives.

    “We don’t aim to shock people with the issues or fetishes that we publish. We simply want to present our readers with information on what exists in the world and encourage insight, exploration and acceptance,” Erin and Mike state in an interview with Husk magazine.

    The provocative spread of their second issue features a photographic series on fetish fans in Michigan, sculptures of handmade prison sex toys called ‘fifis’, an essay that investigates the sexual history of cannibalism in the western world as well as modern art and interviews pertaining to sexuality, fetish and sexual subcultures. The diversity of their latest issue acts as a testament to the diverse nature of human sexuality. It might be conceded that some of these sexual practices are taboo, but in a time of omorashi and adult babies are people truly still shocked by sexual subcultures?

    Phile operates between Toronto, NYC and Berlin (cities with rich sexual and queer histories). Mike and Erin research stories from all over the world to guarantee that all contributors are of varying ethnicities, genders and sexual identities, thereby preventing a domination of white western sexuality and experiences, and enabling a diversity of voices.

    Phile then acts as an access point into explorations of sexual freedom for its readers. Mike and Erin’s aspirations for their project is that it will act as a tool for their audience to explore and celebrate their sexuality and sexual preferences in a fun and playful manner. Phile is also educational in that it shows its reader which sexual subcultures already exist. Creating a platform for this discourse and normalizing human desire is what makes Phile and other platforms of this nature important. Sexuality and sexual preference are there to be celebrated.