Monday morning, in the heat of the approaching midday I had the opprtunity to work with two performance artists, Celeste Theron and Nokwanda Zakiyyah Shabangu for their peice on motherhood and racism. 'Otherhood' was a fascinating work to convey through photography - especially the spatial effect a performance like this has on public space.
The performance in itself brings into question questions about motherhood, racism and letting your child breastfeed from another woman. Featured on Radio 2000 the interview by Celeste Theron discussed the process of doing this kind of work as safely as possible and the reality of getting an HIV AIDS test done.
In terms of the location, seated at the feet of our legendary passe president, Nelson Mandela, the entire tourist swarm suddenly became aware of the reality of public space and the energy was potent, without walls and a ceiling keeping it contained, the eyes of each witness to the piece was defined the boundaries of this performance space.
The photgraphs have all been edited to subdue to the bright colours of summer, also to focus on the composition of the spatial arrangements of these two woman and their children in their context and also relate to the hues of the outfits that both wore as their statement pieces.
The heat taking its toll on the children, so it was decided to leave tehe open and head for shade- and soon an otherworldly family portrait came into being below a shadey tree with a huddle of lecturers and a photographer.
And then Zaire learnt that focusing my lens was really fun and I was able to get some beautiful closeups of him.
