An Indigenous I/Eye

An Indigenous I/Eye - MFA Graduate Exhibition

Initially, this body of work came out of a desire to pinpoint, and ruminate on, some of the reasons why so many Black (South African) visual artists make work that seems to be in reaction to white peoples’ tastes and sensibilities. Along the way, though, I was encountered with so many other - and to be honest, more interesting - questions, like: what is Blackness? How is it constituted? And what role do our environments and institutions play in that construction? And of course, if something as central to ones identity as race is a construct, then what is left of us, once we strip that away? Is it even possible to?

Projections

One of the first things my research uncovered is that race is not a material, objective fact at all, but instead a social construct; a shared consensus amongst all of us on some level that as something as arbitrary as skin pigmentation is symbolic of a person's character traits. I wanted to make something which spoke to that, but also somehow made the audience aware of their own complicity in it; something that showed them in real-time how we all project our learned assumptions and meanings onto the concept of race.

I feel like this series not only speaks to how we project our owned meanings onto people based on their identity categories, but it also speaks to the difficulties of visual (figurative) representation. When I was installing this I kept asking myself the same question over and over again: “Do you feel seen?” How do you make work that touches on your identity – especially if you’re Black - without other people (regardless of their own race) projecting their own meanings onto it? Instead of trying to pretend that these issues didn’t exist, I decided I’d try to confront them head on.

Photo Credit: Ross Charnock

Constitution

With this series I was thinking about how they’re also universally deemed to be beautiful structures, but what about what they symbolize, and the colonial exploitation that funded the construction of all of those beautiful buildings? What do those landscapes look like from my perspective, from the bottom up?

The result was a series of architectural illustrations that, as I was working on them, became a way to think about the intricacies and overwhelming structure of hegemonic landscapes, but I also have to admit that in spite of that I still find them to be really beautiful, and honestly, I couldn’t really tell you if I went through the trouble of all of that detail because I wanted to do the forms justice or if it was because I wanted to punish myself for not being able to stop seeing them as beautiful.

Which led to the later part of the series being a way of thinking through the ways that landscapes as well as social identities are constructed, and whether or not there were any crossovers or similarities between the two. The result ended up being an exploration of spatialization; how our environments - but also how we, in turn - also construct the meaning of our environments.

Photo Credit: Ross Charnock

Obliquely

I've never felt entirely comfortable being a part of the 'art world', and just about every other Black artist I know has told me that they feel the same way to some degree. From the subject matter or experiences we choose to draw from, the degree of urgency or rage to which we express those experiences, to the way we handle ourselves in engagements with the public - it can all feel lie one strenuous tightrope walk.

As a result, you're rarely ever presenting yourself or your work in an entirely upfront way; there's always a degree of obscuring your true desires and artistic intentions. And even when you aren't doing that, those intentions often end up being obscured anyway. This series is a contemplation of those dynamics, but it ultimately also eventually led me to realize that I’d like to spend less time worrying about navigating the world and more time just living in it. Less time trying to find creative angles and routes, less time pulling back from presenting myself as I am. Less time anxiously awaiting the worst.