“I don’t have the privilege to take a break from being a womxn. By creating artwork that speaks to these issues I am able to heal and tackle them head on and in the process hopefully, challenge the oppressive system we all exist in.” – from an interview with Design Indaba.
Thandiwe Msebenzi, a photographer and member of all-female art collective iQhiya, uses her chosen medium as a way to communicate her own experiences as a womxn, and to connect this to larger conversations about how womxn are treated, and how they are forced to navigate space. Through unpacking her own experiences she is able to challenge patriarchal notions of womxn’s bodies as objects of desire and control. Msebenzi has mentioned that this idea of womxn existing as items to be consumed by eyes and hands, and her own encounters with the feelings that come along with this, form the foundation for concepts she explores through her lens.
Ndivumele ndimemeze
The themes that she addresses relate to the deliberate silencing of female voices, and unboxing the presence of femme beings within physical, political and cultural spaces. Deeping the engagement with these themes is how she looks at trauma and violence. Holding these different elements together in her work is the strength that womxn have individually and collectively. In her work this strength is presented as a site of defiance, healing and reconstructing problematic understandings of womanhood, especially in relation to problematic notions of manhood.
Often using herself as her own subject, one is able to see how her work is a direct reflection of her own experience. However, it also allows for the recognition of oneself as a womxn, particularly a womxn of colour, within one of the layers she lays out in her work. The potency of her message comes from her interrogation of private spaces – spaces that are assumed to be the containers of safety and comfort. One of the ways she has represented this is by photographing weapons that she has placed on beds.
Referring to the meaning of this, Msebenzi expressed that, “sometimes you need something that transcends certain meaning. Weapons mean violence. Put them on a bed, something quite soft and something quite vulnerable. Juxtapose them and that is a story of two things that should not co-exist but they do because that is the story of someone’s life.”
Thinking about this within the context of 16 Days of Activism, and the fact that most of this violence is performed by men that are known to their victims, the relevance of Msebenzi’s work echoes continuously.
I interviewed photographers Nobukho Nqaba, Thandiwe Msebenzi and Sitaara Stodel about their upcoming exhibition, Displacement.
Having met while studying at Michaelis School of Fine Art at UCT and being exposed to each other’s individual creative practices, being awarded the Tierney fellowship solidified their desire to thread together the similarities in their work.
They each create work based on their own experiences, with their art practices providing an avenue for reflection, questioning and unraveling. Sitaara’s current work revolves around the themes of home, identity, memory and exploring the subconscious. Nobukho prefers not to box her work into fixed themes, but has created work that focuses on migrant life, movement and otherness, and has recently made a body of work about mourning, letting go and “finding my own self”. Thandiwe’s recent work addresses rape culture and the silencing of womxn in places of comfort.
The title of their exhibition refers to displacement both figuratively and literally, and the impact that comes from feeling out of place. “We talk about issues of being lost and this loss comes from being in spaces that are not permanently ours. These are often spaces that are supposed to provide comfort and those spaces include the home,” Nobukho explained. Their work addresses how in these places of comfort issues of power arise and manifested through enactments of particular understandings of masculinity in relation to the female presence. “We felt that we need to have this collective voice and bring about this educational exhibition to bring issues around movement, otherness and displacement to the fore,” Nobukho explained.
A House is Not a Home, 1 – Sitaara Stodel
In Sitaara’s series of works titled Suburban Dream she uses photography as a “tool for suspension of belief”. In her work A House Not A Home, 1 Sitaara uses collage and photography to create the illusion of looking at a landscape of houses. However upon closer inspection the viewer notices that it is in fact a small set with cut outs of images of different houses, lit up to look like middle class suburbia at night. This brings into question the understanding of photography as a form of documentation that reveals ‘the truth’. Sitaara also explains that this work is part of her exploration of her memories of constantly having to move with her mother and sisters as a result of being evicted from middle class houses they could not afford. “This photographic series is almost like looking at all of the homes I lived in and the cross-over of memories that I have with these houses,” she explains. The theme ‘eviction’ is used in her work as an “echo” to her own experiences of growing up but also speaks to South Africa’s history of evictions, which has a large influence on her feelings around the importance of unpacking feelings of displacement. “All of us being woman of colour, I feel that we have an understanding of how people treat us differently, struggling to feel like we have a ‘place’ – a place in South Africa, a place in the art world, a place to exist safely etc.”.
Ndiyayekelela Undibizela kuwe IV – Nobukho Nqaba
Nobukho uses photography to document her performativity. “I perform and document what I do and the final work becomes the photograph of the actual performance,” she explains further. In her current body of work displacement happens as the result of a state of mind because of longing for her father who has passed on. “At the same time I am fighting certain emotions that hold me back and I use material that is reminiscent of a migrant and a miner which speaks a lot about the history of [migrant life] in South Africa. I use my own female body to fight a male presence that is haunting me both in a good way and in a bad way”. The materials that she uses contain the narrative of being displaced from a place of familiarity for her father who worked on the mines. Nobukho wraps herself with these materials, “often burdening myself with an absence that is continuously present in my mind and also trying to let go but finding it difficult because I am my father’s child.”.
“indawo yam”- my place – Thandiwe Msebenzi
Thandiwe has two works on show that dissect displacement. A photograph of her standing on a ladder carrying a man’s blazer in her hand titled “kwawze kubenini”- for how long reflects on the question “how long will I have to climb ladders as a woman to be seen?”. This works unpacks the sense of displacement womxn feel when trying to exist in anti-feminine spaces. In the work “indawo yam”- my place Thandiwe is photographed sitting on a small hill covering herself with a lace curtain, creating her own place of safety.
Thandiwe expressed the importance of this exhibition outside of the themes that they unpack. She highlighted the difficulty in finding womxn photographers of colour as references or sources of inspiration in the library besides the work of Zanele Muholi. “It becomes important to have this exhibition because we are all individual photographers working in a variety of creative and exciting ways,” she expressed. Thandiwe added that they thinking about working on an idea after the exhibition in the spirit of opening up a space for womxn photographers of colour, and creating an archive. So watch this space!
Displacement will open on the 4th of May at 99 Loop Gallery in Cape Town.
Dreamscape – Sitaara Stodel
“kwawze kubenini”- for how long – Thandiwe Msebenzi
“En as die voels sing, kom daar bink straatjies uit die voels se vertjies.” (And when the birds sing rays of light stream from their feathers.). When asked about why this is her favourite quote, Bronwyn Katz explained that this quote by her grandmother speaks to the ideas she has about voices, the importance of speaking and expressing oneself. One can see how these words are echoed in her artwork. “I belong to a family of storytellers. I am most influenced by stories passed on to me by the elders in my family and in the community I grew up in,” Katz explains.
Besides describing herself as an orange ? (referring to both the colour and the fruit), she is an artist who works with multiple media ranging from sculpture and installation to video and performance. She lets the idea or thought she is interested in sharing dictate which media is the best for its materialization. “I majored in sculpture during my BAFA which resulted in a sensitivity to material which I take advantage of when creating my video performances…Some ideas need my physical body to be more present/visible than others, in such cases video becomes a more appropriate medium for realizing the work,” she explains.
Bronwyn’s overarching themes of memory and giving voice are coupled with confrontations with trauma, violence and erasure. Her creative process involves a lot of observation and experimentation with materials which speak to these observations. She describes her becoming an artist not as a realization, but rather as something that happened quite naturally. “I spent the first two years of my BAFA trying to drop out of art school. Being a Black Womxn at the Michaelis School of Fine Art was a very traumatic experience. I had started applying to study alternatives such as architecture and town planning when my mother, who initially was against me studying art, encouraged me to follow through and finish what I had started. During my last two years at the institution I got involved with communities of Black fine art students who were discussing and confronting the trauma experienced at Michaelis. Being a part of such communities was what strengthened my confidence as a fine art student. It helped me understand the importance of me (a Black Womxn) being an artist / “Culture maker”. Katz views her work as a way to work through questions in her head and serve as a knowledge-making technique.
Bronwyn has been making a name for herself through the awards she has received, including the Simon Gerson Prize for her body of work as well as the Sasol New Signatures merit award for her video ‘Grond Herinnering’ (2015). She also participated in the 12th Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal, along with having her first solo exhibition and participation in multiple group exhibitions this year.
Her first solo exhibition, ‘Groenpunt‘ at blank projects intensively engaged with ideas on memory. The title of the exhibition centers Cape Town’s Green Point where the exhumation of remains took place in 2003, as well as reflects on Groenpunt, where she grew up in Kimberley. Influenced by the book Memory is the Weapon by Don Mattera which refers to the colonial project and the violent act of erasure and “forgetting” which accompanied this project, she used the inner foam from old household furniture to think about the violent act of exhumation and its connection to the history of land dispossession in South Africa. “I am interested in working against this notion of forgetting and erasure, which still exists.” When asked about the relationship between her materials and the content of her artwork she explained that she “understand[s] traces and residue present in space as a source of memory. I become interested in the residue and traces of the body visible on foam from used mattress, coaches and other objects which offer the body rest.”.
She was also part of the group exhibition ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams‘ this year, based on the novel by K Sello Duiker which looks at themes related to madness, shame, sex, violence, power, intimacy, history, xenophobia, sexuality, love, race, mysticism and mystery. Her digital video, ‘Wees Gegroet’, refers to the Black Womxn’s body in protest. “I was interested in the confronting of violence and the agency of Black Womxn bodies in this confronting of violence. The video was highly influenced by the student movements of last year and the fundamental role played by Black Womxn during these movements.”.
Her sculptural work ‘Ouma grootjie’ (2015) was part of ‘3881 days’ at blank projects. She also participated in the group installation ‘New Monuments‘ at Commune.1 which explored the possibility of playing with the meaning and structure of the monument. Her collection of works can be seen on her website. Watch this space to see further manifestations of Blkgrl magic.
