UNSEEN MAGAZINE (2017)

Your oeuvre can be described as a commentary on the avoidance of recognition of historical oppression and racism in post-colonial Africa. 

Can you tell us a bit about this inspiration, and how current reparations tend to discount or ignore the past oppression and violence inflicted on black Africans?

This avoidance manifests in the South African political landscape as an act of self-induced/sustained historical amnesia prescribed during the years preceding our first democratic elections. In fact south Africa had what is known as the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission), as public forum meant to open up discussions around the atrocities and suffering acted out on black people by a racist system. 

During the TRC black people came out to hear stories about how their loved ones where detained and tortured by white police men. In these televised session’s victims and white South Africans alike where encouraged to forgive and forget…as a way of paving the path for a “new” South Africa.  But the facts of history cannot be ignored. The structural inequality of apartheid and colonialism are ever present in the ordinary lives of black South Africans today. So there is an implied failure of the project to reconstruct South Africa in the collective imagination of its citizens. While much about the past has been erased from recent memory the structures that make up our cities, towns, and institutions have been inherited unaltered from the Apartheid state.

The veil of rainbow nationalism was just another convenient way to carry on the centuries of erasure, of erasing the history of black bodies, of maintaining the socio-economic constructs and barriers meant to keep black bodies invisible, in the mines, in the firms, in white homes where they tend the garden and make the home, in the media too, a new kind of representation negated the history and instead preferred to conjure an apolitical caricature of black bodies. This absence and erasure of a black political history in this country exists as a consequence of social systems set up by colonialism, which disregarded black bodies unless when perceived as property. 

The system of indentured labour in the Cape Colony in 1852 at the onset of European settlement paves the way for the mass recruitment of black laborers from all around the Africa later on during the industrialization of the South African economy. In today’s “ post apartheid” society the long line of black labours has given rise to an entire country struggling to overcome the historic scars inflicted by centuries of white supremacy on their bodies, minds and spirits. Again in this context, save for the new middle class, the black body is ever more absent in the arena of socio-economic redevelopment.  This absence is often addressed in the public through the collective display of discontent in marches and protest against the continuance of neo-apartheid where black bodies become one with the landscape, in the cities, in the rural areas, and in our townships. 

In my own work I investigate the history of the black body throughout all the different formations of the South African state. Although there are difference in each of the contexts the one thing that seems to remain consistent in the invisibility of black bodies in a country that once belonged to them, absent but somehow also the raw material of the entire construction of the south African economy since the arrival of white settlers.  In my work I try to reflect the violence of history on the black body, by using my own body as a marker of the collective black South African experience.

The importance of acknowledging historical manifestations of oppression plays an integral role in your work as a contemporary artist. Can you speak a little bit about your process of deciding what visual representations will best symbolize this history, whether they be props or other visual metaphors? 

At times I’ve found it easy to refer to my own personal history in order to access the memory of my childhood, which coincides with a pivotal moment in the coming of age in the history of South Africa.

Growing up in Soweto I was exposed to the various changes that were beginning to reshape the social landscape. The juxtaposition of the euphoric display of ‘Freedom’ in the public, and the after shocks of the legacy of a violent and oppressive history was a immense contrast. At once people where celebrating liberation while also the reality of the inequality of colonialism and apartheid where becoming more apparent in the lives of Free South Africans who were still living as second and third-class citizens. I refer to the sort of experiences I lived through during that time, coming into myself in that contradictory environment of the euphoria and a dystopia felt by my family, mother and father, and my community.

The stories and memories I refer to in my work offer the clues for some of the symbolism that hold the visual narratives. All the motifs I’ve used in my work, from the weapons, horse-blinkers, hats, aprons, and costumes, all refer to some minor or significant details of my experience. The choice of materials such as coal, flour, and smoke are also all influenced by some aspect of my experiences such as my exposure to the political violence witnessed in townships of south Africa in the late 80’s and early 90’s as the apartheid government attempted to derail the liberation process. 

Do you research a topic heavily beforehand, or is this a more spontaneous process?

I mediate a lot on my subjects. It’s a process that slips between dreams, interactions with people and spaces, conversations and my travels, in the library…and so on. At times the work becomes a channeling or a conjuring that demands a more inward look at my own spiritual existence. 

Your work primarily focuses on documenting staged or performed moments that serve a metaphorical purpose and narrative. Aside from photography, you also create art in other mediums, such as performance and film. Can you tell us how performance influences your photographic practice specifically? What do you think it contributes to your images?

I am more inclined at this point in my carrier not to ascribe any sort of hierarchy to the different media I employ to make artwork. Im concerned with the image…and I am not precious about the tools I use to get to those images. But I studies sculpture and photography at the Michaelis School of Fine art but quickly gravitated to making more to dimension representations, which led to an extended self portraiture project. But working with photography the transition between still and moving image was easy…and the evolution between moving image and live action was also natural. 

At first glance your images appear to be black and white, but upon further inspection they are often actually highly contrasted colour prints. Can you talk about this aesthetic choice? How does it contribute to the overall message of your work?

I feel that I employ that particular approach to the aesthetic treatment of my work as a means of making the images emotive, connecting the viewer to someplace other than the present. The colour in understated…from afar they prints seem monochromatic but by simply getting closer to the image the subtle skin tones start to reveal themselves. I like that kind of seductive element about images; I also enjoy the element of confrontational work that also draws the eye into a layered viewing experience. 

Tell us a bit about the new work you will be showing at Unseen. What is the significance of the title?

The title is self-explanatory. Fossils refer to remains the remains or impression of a prehistoric plant or animal embedded in rock and preserved in petrified form. The work is a visual expression of the same idea yet with the material of the fossils being my own face. So the work is about my own ancestry and lineage. 

How did you create these images?

I made molds of my face, cast them in wax, then cut into several pieces, and arranged in different compositions then lit and photographed. 

Fossils contains photographs of people shedding a hard, external shell from their own faces, only to reveal that identical facial constructs exist beneath this outer layer. Can you explain the meaning behind this imagery? 

The clue to unpacking the work is in the title of the work. The work is looking at the notion of identity as an archaeological dig. History unearthed and made present. It’s about the trail of DNA. 

The work deals with the ideas of heritage and ancestry. The pieces are seen as “found” archeological fossils, fragments of faces, layered over each other. In the image the fragments are layered over partially complete specimens to highlight the inheritance. There is also a suggestion of shedding, in the same way that some insects and animals can shed a layer of skin to reveal a more renewed layer of skin. 

You tend to work with minimal, blank backdrops in either stark white or black. Paired with dramatic lighting, these settings allow for a focus on your subjects that is intense and intimate. Can you explain why you use this technique in your photographs, and how you think it specifically contributes to Fossils?

When I started working with photography I started experimenting with different lighting technics, but aesthetically I wanted to my photography to reference art historical traditions of painting and portraiture. I was also charmed by how light can define a subject and ground it, and make it present, almost physical. I think that there is also a preoccupation with form and shadows. 

Fossils fuses different processes. The wax faces are made from a mold of my own face, cast and broken into pieces, reassembled in a composition, lit and photographed. In the one action of creating Fossils there is a slippage between sculpture and photography