Bubblegum Club

Tag: women of colour

  • Buhle Ngaba – the impact of storytelling

    Buhle Ngaba – the impact of storytelling

    Cogito, ergo sum. A Latin philosophical proposition put forward by Decartes in the 1600s, roughly translating to mean “I think therefore I am”. The work of Buhle Ngaba unintentionally speaks to this proposition, and combines it with her passion for literature and storytelling. This transforms into a statement – I write therefore I am. I speak therefore I am. As an author and actress, words as text or as animated sound are her chosen medium to share her story and impact the narrative of past and current herstory.

    Encouraging people, particularly young women and girls of colour to tell their own stories is one of the motivations for her work. In light of this Buhle wrote the children’s book The Girl Without A Sound. Bringing diversity to the children’s book landscape, this book was born as a response to reflecting on the fairytales young girls are told. Stories with protagonists being blue-eyed princesses with long golden locks, and narratives emphasizing physical beauty. Writing and publishing her book was a way of undoing this framework for fairytales, and putting together words and images that heal, empower and entertain. The story is of a voiceless girl of colour in search of a sound that she can claim as her own. This channels the energy that permeates her practice as a whole – giving power to devices to draw strength from for women of colour in a world that rejects, shames and pushes them down.

    Parallel to her work as a writer and a performer, Buhle is the director of KaMatla, an NPO created to assist and offer guidance in the development of arts in underprivileged communities, and to foster habits of personal and communal storytelling among young people.

    Over the years she has received well deserved recognition for her creative endeavours, including being awarded the Gauteng Youth Premiers award for excellence. She also received two Kanna Theatre Awards for her first play ‘The Swan Song’ which was created during her time at The Royal Shakespeare Company.

    To find some encouragement this women’s month and to keep up with Buhle’s work, follow her on Instagram.

  • anticlockwise Ingwembe – on the hunt for languages that question space and text

    anticlockwise Ingwembe – on the hunt for languages that question space and text

    Tsholofelo Seleke, Siyanda Marrengane and Refiloe Namise are the young, female artists who make up the collective anticlockwise INGWEMBE. The collective has an interest in “cultural objects”, including the wooden spoon (ingwembe). This is an object that is central to their creative and artistic practice, made clear from its presence in their collective name. When asked to unpack their name, the collective presented me with an explanation that resembles the format of a dictionary definition that combined the various associations attributed to the wooden spoon:

    *ingwembe/lesokwane: a woman’s tool, a tool that instills discipline, a signifier of power- of an ‘invisible’ power, a symbol of inferiority, of domestication, mixing and re-mixing.

    There is an immediate link between the word anticlockwise and ingwembe. Anticlockwise brings to mind the idea of movement, flow and direction. Combined with ingwembe, one is able to imagine the rhythmic movement made when using a wooden spoon for cooking. The prefix ‘anti’ makes those who encounter their work aware of the fact that they are working against the flow and rhythm of institutions, texts and spaces that deny the presence of people of colour, particularly women of colour. Their work is what they refer to as “coll[activism]”; a recognition of the importance of collaborative creation and activism. This is also a concise way to present the operation of their art practice.

    “We are questioning the use of space- how a space is used, can be used, how it was previously used, imagined, how far it can be occupied, in various ways. This interest is often sparked by contexts, and how we read objects in different spaces. We explore these interrogations through sound, visual imagery, objects, texts and performance (performance-based installations/installation-based performance). Anything that can be experienced (seen, read, smelt, heard, felt, touched) can be a text. We enjoy the possibilities of being more…and see the importance of learning, teaching, sharing knowledges in ways that can be read differently.”

    In this exploration they are also on the hunt for a language that exists outside of the art world, one which is more “public”. This language can be seen, heard, felt, smelt and spoken, and is more fluid. When asked how they would recognise this language, anticlockwise expressed that “You will know it when you see it” stating that “this language is continuously being recreated.”

    Their first event Noma Yini: Round 1 was the closing of an event that was held at NGO (Nothing Gets Organised) in March 2016. The project was a collaboration with Eastside Projects (based in Birmingham) and facilitated by Gabi Ngcobo. It was based on the idea of a circuit, as well as the exchange and sourcing of materials around Nugget Square in Jeppestown. Participation took the form of a workshop and the making of portable chairs.

    Having tasted the stress and excitement of creating an event, anticlockwise took on another – OK’salayo. It began as the celebration of a friend’s recent job, and then transformed into a full on party, with a ‘silent’ landlord offering them a space at a former panel beaters. There is a OK’salayo 2.0 in the making.

    At the moment the collective is working on the idea of an experimental school called ama-fly-by-nights. “It is everywhere, yet nowhere, and it exists within us”. This school focuses on forms of knowledge production that are open and allows for narratives to be expressed in various languages (oral, visual, sonic, etc.)

    Follow anticlockwise INGWEMBE on Instagram to keep up with their work.

  • 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.

  • Maxim Vakhovskiy – Celebrating the raw beauty women of colour possess through photography

    Maxim Vakhovskiy – Celebrating the raw beauty women of colour possess through photography

    Maxim Vakhovskiy is a self-taught photographer based in Charlotte, North Carolina (USA). Growing up in Kiev, Ukraine, her family immigrated to the United States when she was 13 years old. Her father’s hobbyist photography instilled a passion for the art form within her.

    “He would create a makeshift darkroom in the small bathroom of our house. I sat with him watching the images emerge on paper under red light. It was one of my favourite things to do and I think that’s when the passion for photography, or at least a small dormant seed, was planted.” – on her father’s photographic practice and influence.

    Maxim tells me in our email interview that the process of finding herself in the photographic landscape was extensive. Initially studying Psychology and Philosophy she switched over to graphic design and concluded with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. It was during her formal training that she rekindled her friendship with the medium of the lens.

    After graduation, Maxim began working at MODE (a branding agency in Charlotte, North Carolina) as a graphic designer. Later she inhabited the part of an art director and transitioned into photography.

    Central to Maxim’s personal practice is portraiture through which she aims to emphasize the raw beauty of the people she photographs. Her work acts as a celebration of womanhood, the human body and women of colour.

    Her work generally plays out within a studio set up and she explains that the reason for this is because of the control that the studio space lends to her. She elaborates on this point by stating that her obsession with precise lighting can be satisfied within the studio space. Another aspect that draws her to the studio is its privacy as she is drawn to nude portraiture. Within the studio the people she photographs can feel more at ease.

    “I think of it as a love affair. I’m in love with my craft and fall a little bit in love with everyone I photograph. To me, it’s one of the few ways to capture a bit of someone’s essence. I focus on visual simplicity that evokes complexity. My work is an exercise of trust and untraditional ideals beauty basked in classic light.”

    Muted tonal backdrops, soft becoming lighting, simplified backgrounds and beautiful women of colour act together to unify Maxim’s vision. With her work, she elevates the beauty of women of colour, womanhood and the human body. Her simplified backgrounds make her work more arresting as attention is brought to the people that she photographs.

  • Amarachi Nwosu – Dismantling Stereotypes and Blurring Racial Lines with Cinema and Photography

    Amarachi Nwosu – Dismantling Stereotypes and Blurring Racial Lines with Cinema and Photography

    Amarachi Nwosu is a Nigerian-American artist currently based in Japan. She creates works within a multitude of mediums which include video, photography and text. With her lens, a visual exploration of contemporary African identity and diversity takes place acting as both a representation and celebration of Blackness. “…If women of colour are not behind the lens then we are less likely to see women of colour cast in front of the lens and only through representation can we truly shape change in the spaces that need it so much.”

    Amarachi creates her work in various locations around the world. Her acute awareness of different energies and cultural representations within different regions of the world has led her to make creative choices in her shooting process that highlight the unique qualities of a specific region. Such decisions are discernible through her choice of colours, location, models and even the team she chooses to work with on a project. The artist believes that this approach to her projects results in a visual representation that possesses several dimensions.

    Traversing between art, fashion and documentary photography a human connection between herself and the people she photographs is imperative to her practice. This connection is cherished by the artist as she believes that in photographing people, she is telling their story as much as she is telling her own.

    With an already established name and client list, Amarachi has created work for adidas Tokyo, Vice Japan, Highsnobiety and her most recent show-stopping credit, Black in Tokyo. Black in Tokyo is a short documentary by Amarachi depicting the experiences of five people of colour who have moved to Japan from Eritrea, the United States and Ghana.

    The film explores the challenges of being black in Tokyo while simultaneously taking a closer look at the experiential opportunities that have helped expats of colour build successful businesses, careers and relationships. The documentary forms a part of Melanin Unscripted, a platform Amarachi created to blur racial lines and dismantle stereotypes by revealing complex cultures and identities from around the world.

    Her practice inhibited within the space of fashion takes on a multifaceted approach where Amarachi frequently takes on up to three behind the scenes roles in one project. She often acts as the photographer, creative director and stylist on a shoot, considering every detail of a project instead of just purely focusing on composition.

    Amarachi is a multifaceted creative expressing the lived experiences of contemporary Africans all over the world through her lens. Her work aids in blurring racial lines and dismantling stereotypes through exposing complex identities and cultures all over the world. Amarachi’s work is then a visual manifesto that indicates to her viewer that African identity is not linear or one-sided, and that narratives surrounding Blackness are complex and diverse.

    Watch Black in Tokyo below:

  • Allana Clarke | Investigating the Construction of Power Politics

    Allana Clarke is a conceptual artist born in 1987 originally from Trinidad and Tobago. Her practice is expressed through sculpture, video, performance and installation work. The residencies that can be marked off on her list at present are The Vermont Studio Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and the Lighthouse Works. In 2014, she was the recipient of the Skowhegan fellowship, the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship MICA, the Peter W. Brooke Fellowship as well as the Vermont Studio Civil Society Fellowship. Adding to her accomplishments, Allana received the Franklin Furnace grant in 2015. Completing her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at MICA, she currently resides in Brooklyn New York.

    The artist branches out the reach of her investigation into the formation of power politics as an authoritative edifice and an abstraction through her selected choice of mediums. Her practice is enthused by conceptual information largely chosen from colonial and post-colonial theory, philosophy, art history and gender studies. Her work is however not solely informed by these texts as she intertwines personal narrative within this theoretical context.

    On Allana’s website she shares a statement bringing to light certain declarations that she outlines as ultimate truths. She expresses therein that all people are identified and affected by our cultural group personae. She continues to say that discourse diction is inherently problematic. Her statement goes on to say that all discourses are totalizing structures that engage cultural group identity and push various individual nuanced entities together. Lastly, she states that there is no discourse that encompasses the cultural group of women of colour that exist within the Caribbean and American context.

    “The primary discourses that they/we/I could fit into are ‘Feminism’ and ‘Black Liberation’ movements. They/we/I do and have not fully been articulated within either of these spaces. ‘Black Liberation’ theories, while giving the perception that “black” is inclusive of both male and female, actually focus on the black male as sole agent and his agenda to gain equal citizenship with the white male allowing him to fully participate within the capitalist system and equally gain the benefits of said system. While feminism, is focused on the white female, using liberalism to negate the experiences of non-white females.”

    Allana’s work is thus centred around this point of realization. She asks the question of whether it is possible to assert her agency while acknowledging inherent antagonism? Which leads her to question if it possible to do so while not participating in hegemonic practices.  Or if it is possible to create a non-totalizing identity structure? Allana’s work serves to investigate these concerns and question the way in which human beings identify as well as the way in which they are identified and is a result of hegemonic power structures.

    Still from ‘Propositions of Questionable Intent Part I’
  • ‘Bigger, Rounder, Blacker’ // Body Positivity with Rochelle Brock

    ‘Bigger, Rounder, Blacker’ // Body Positivity with Rochelle Brock

    Rochelle Brock is a young photographer of colour from Brooklyn, New York. With her brand Fat Leopard Photography she has been revolutionizing the concept of the ideal body type. Her work challenges conventional beauty standards in America featuring beautiful curvy women of colour styled in the latest fashion trends. Here I will analyse Rochelle’s methodology and technique.

    Her work can be deemed out of the ordinary by the way in which she documents the confidence that radiates from her models. Using colour palettes that shift from very vibrant tones to nitty gritty and the concrete jungle, Rochelle seems to have an uncanny know-how of evoking mood with her colour choices. While Rochelle’s work focuses predominantly on the bodies of women of colour and their curves she does not leave out slimmer body types and some of her series’ revolve around slim women.

    Photograph from ‘Kidnap snap’

    Rochelle has an amazing ability to move from a studio set up with soft defused light and pastels that amplify her subjects to a more documentary style of shooting which is an outstanding achievement to ascertain as so many photographers are stuck in one form of image creation.

    Rochelle’s motivation behind celebrating marginalized body types came from her frustration with not seeing her own body type represented in any fashion campaigns and she set out to change that. Today, Rochelle has worked on various fashion campaigns and is a true ambassador of body positivity who expresses that she wants a bigger, rounder, blacker movement.

    Photograph from ‘Jarae Hollieway’

    What Rochelle enjoys about the body positive movement is that it has helped her come to terms with her own body shape and love herself for all that she is. Her advice to women who have larger body types is this, “Take up more space. If we don’t fit the ideal norm in society or even in the BOPO movement, we need to make sure we step into that “room” when we get the chance. Take up space and be heard!”

    Femme photographers like Rochelle are actively trying to normalize larger body types and the fact that this kind of intervention is necessary is dismaying. Why should larger women have to fight or campaign or have movements for body positivity and acceptance when they are already beautiful? I am thankful for the body positive movement, as this is a societal problem that requires resolve. I do hope that with time the movement will have a larger impact and create more change into what is considered the ideal body type. Fair and accurate representation of all women is the norm that we need to strive for. All women are beautiful, and that’s that.

    Photograph from ‘Jarae Hollieway’
    Photograph from ‘Girls Girls Girls’
    Photograph from ‘Girls Girls Girls’

     

     

  • Illustrator Panteha Abareshi // visually representing the realities of anxiety and depression

    17-year-old Tuscan (Arizona) illustrator Panteha Abareshi is making work that attempts to capture the realities of living with a mental illness. Through her images she represents the struggles that come with anxiety and depression. More than that, she portrays women of colour with strength that shines beyond how they may feel at times. This strength comes from acknowledging vulnerability and confusion. Taking inspiration from the likes of Erykah Badu, films by David Lynch as well as her Iranian/Jamaican upbringing, the main driver for her journey into the art world was the time she spent in the hospital due to her being born with Sickle Cell Beta Thalassemia. She turned her frequent visits to hospital beds into metaphorical studio visits.

    The knives, snakes and roses that appear to be inflicting pain on the women she draws are physical manifestations of the pain that these women are feeling.

    It’s All Excruciating, 2017. From the series ‘Girls//People’.

    A second foundation on which her work is built relates to her rejection of unrealistic understandings of love. “My artwork is a direct expression of my beliefs that the way young people, especially girls, are taught to value, prioritize and derive happiness from ‘love’ is damaging and wrong. I struggle with the societal standards for romance, love and sex constantly, and express that in my work because I want to normalize the notion of women/people not craving intimacy,” Abareshi explains in her artist bio.

    Abareshi hosted her first solo show in New York City in April at Chinatown’s Larrie Gallery where she exhibited a series of works titled “Blessed Is The Pain”. With these works she unpacks what it was like to grow up with divorced parents who have polar opposite attitudes towards religion. “My father, who immigrated from Iran, is a steadfast atheist, and never spoke to me about religion. My mother, who immigrated from Jamaica, is a fiercely devout Christian,” she explains in her artist statement. Being forced to go to church and learn bible verses, while discovering her identity as a woman and holding reservations about Christianity, resulted in damaging interpretations of her personality. These and other experiences while she was growing up contributed towards her anxiety and depression. The works that she put together for her solo show visually represent this tumultuous time.

    To check out more of Abareshi’s work visit her website.

    Flesh, 2017. From the series ‘Blessed is the Pain’

  • Monica Kim Garza // “You a real ass woman ‘n I like it”

    Monica Kim Garza. The Mexican-Korean artist’s paintings and mixed media work depict women with fuller figures partaking in activities such as sun tanning, riding bicycles and lifting barbells bare-breasted. Often the women in her images appear to be going about these activities with little care for the viewer’s attention, and other times their eyes confront the viewer directly. Painted in all shades of brown, Garza’s subtle shading and bold black outlines make the female figures in her works the focus of each image despite their little care for the viewer’s attention.

    Her focus on the naked female figure came from drawing inspiration from Native American as well as Inca art and culture. Her father had a deep love and curiosity about these cultures, and Garza spent time in Peru, which is a country which has a rich culture and history with the Incas.

    Not there for any viewer’s voyeuristic satisfaction, Garza paints her characters with personalities that come across in their facial expressions and the poses she chooses for them. Her work embraces sexual freedom with no relation to pornographic stereotypes, but simply for the empowering feeling that comes with ownership of multiple forms of pleasure.

    Rough brushstrokes reveal the layers of colour that build up on her canvases, creating the distinctive texture that makes her work so recognizable. Her Mexican and Korean roots share a space in her work, with her often pairing Spanish and Korean translations side by side in a painting. Besides these textual references, they also share visual signifiers such as a painting of La Virgen de Guadalupe [title of the Virgin Mary associated with a image kept in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in México City] hanging on a bedroom wall and women in the kitchen making kimchi [a spicy Korean side dish made with fermented vegetables, usually cabbage].

    Self-care comes across as the centre of Garza’s work. She presents women with well-rounded lives – women who exercise, go to the beach, eat a variety of foods, text, spend time with their friends and alone, enjoy sexual encounters and paint.

    The message behind her practice can be summarized by the words she painted on one of her artworks, “You a real ass woman ‘n I like it”.