Swiss artists Cédric Djedje and Noémi Michel embarked on a residency in Johannesburg last year to advance their ongoing research project titled “Black diasporic futurities.” This interdisciplinary endeavour delves into narratives of futurity within the global Black diaspora, blending elements of documentary theatre, performance art, and Black feminist critical theory. Djedje and Michel offer insights…
The censoring of music is nothing new, from Elvis Presley being banned for apparently being “sexually explicit” to the robust stance taken by the FBI against N.W.A and particularly their song “Fuck the Police”. In Britain there have historically also been clampdowns on music that the conservative government didn’t understand or didn’t agree with. You…
It has been argued in recent times that there is a resurgence of interest and identification with the figure of the witch. Questioning the basis of this renewed interest, I began wondering if the witch had truly re-emerged taking into consideration not only womxn identifying with the symbol of the witch but the practice and…
The idea of the tortured artist who is unpredictable, troubled, deranged, mentally unbalanced and not well adjusted proliferates media and normal representations of what it means to be an artistic ‘genius’. We see this in the narration of the lives of artists who have contributed tremendously towards culture—novelist and poet Sylvia Plath, abstract painter Agnes…
When a beautiful, innocent baby is born we hail; ‘it’s a boy’ or ‘it’s a girl’. The performance begins —You will wear pink and not blue, you will play with dolls, you will seek perfection and beauty but not bravery —what American philosopher and gender theorist, Judith Butler, dubs gender performativity; the stylised repetition of…
Instagram has become one of the most powerful tools for today’s photographer. The platform empowers photographers across the world to have their work viewed thousands, if not millions, of times over. The community behind the social network cannot be underestimated either, openly sharing a wealth of knowledge and inspiring their like-minded peers to take their passion…
As has always been the case, people find it hard to speak about mental illness, people find it uncomfortable. Because as much as people fear the paranormal due to its inexplicable nature, they fear mental illness to a similar degree if not dare I say, even more so. The reasons for this can be pulled…
According to the World Economic Forum 15-20 million young Africans are expected to join the workforce every year for the next three decades —begging the question; what opportunities will exist to allow these young individuals meaningful work; work that is challenging, impactful and unexploitative. Surviving as an independent artist has always been a particularly difficult endeavour….
In a post-apocalyptic Ethiopian landscape, where Michael Jordan is enshrined, masked Nazi-clad bandits steal Ninja-turtle amulets, and witches trade in Michael Jackson records, we meet Birdy and Candy. As a rusted spaceship hovers in the sky, and a defunct bowling ball machine returns to life, Candy embarks on a quest to find Santa Claus. As…
“I want my voice to be harsh, I don’t want it to be beautiful, I don’t want it to be pure.” – Frantz Fanon * The foundation for this writing was gathered from the writings of George Yancy in his book Black Bodies, White Gazes – The continuing significance of race published in 2008 So…
Watching the contemporary art scene evolve is a little bit like watching a sports game as a complete philistine with no knowledge of the rules. You can’t really tell who the star player is, you’re definitely not sure where the ball is going to go, you have no conception of what is allowed or not…
In a rapidly changing digitized world many careers have already seen a death in human occupation, such as quality control checkers in factories that have been replaced by machine generated algorithms. This bring about the question of what this digitization and the soon to be, if not already, redundant nature of certain career paths means…
