#selfrepresentation

Asma21, 2018

Mixed media: watercolour, colour pencils, pinball pens and gouache on 230g paper. Original piece size 29,7 x 42 cm

Remaking a self-representational piece from 2013 for the individual exhibition O meu nome é um Eco (=My name is an Echo).

     “When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, many African countries were still fighting for their independence from European colonialism, and black nationalism was at an all-time high. While Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia were slowly winning independence, South Africa’s fight for freedom against racialized oppression was quashed with brutal force by the apartheid state. 

     It is so unfortunate that, in most of those countries that gained independence before South Africa, homophobia, queerphobia, transphobia and lesbophobia are deeply entrenched, with African leaders criminalizing homosexuality and publicly projecting hate speech.

     As black lesbian women and gay men today we are resisting homophobia, queerphobia and transphobia simply by living our lives. We put ourselves at risk in the townships by coming out and being seen, but we refuse to comply and to deny our own existence.” – Zanele Muholi, Johannesburg, April 2014

Image 1: Left: Lebo Mashifane, District Six, Cape Town, 2009, Right: Linda Myataza, NY 147, Gugulethu, Cape Town, 2011

Image 2: Left: Thandeka Ndamase, Kwa Thema, Springs, Johannesburg, 2010, Right: Ayanda Magudulela, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2010

January 2023/6

It would be wrong to think that the discussion of “identity” ought to proceed prior to a discussion of gender identity for the simple reason that “persons” only become intelligible through becoming gendered in conformity with recognisable standards of gender intelligibility. 

Whereas the question of what constitutes “personal identity” within philosophical accounts almost always centres on the question of what internal feature of the person establishes the continuity or self-identity of the person through time, the question here will be: To what extent do regulatory practices of gender formation and division constitute identity, the internal coherence of the subject, indeed, the self-identical status of the person? To what extent is “identity” a normative ideal rather than a descriptive feature of experience? And how do the regulatory practices that govern gender also govern culturally intelligible notions of identity? In other words, the “coherence” and “continuity” of “the person” are not logical or analytic features of personhood, but, rather, socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility. Inasmuch as “identity” is assured through the stabilising concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality, the very notion of “the person” is called into question by the cultural emergence of those “incoherent” or “discontinuous” gendered beings who appear to be persons but who fail to conform to the gendered norms of cultural intelligibility by which persons are defined. 

"I sit with my shadow, I sing with my echo."

I can still remember the very first time when Mr. Chung (home room teacher, back when I was like 10 or something), showed me the concept of Fine Art. It felt like a whole world that I hadn’t seen before, suddenly revealed itself, and brought itself into my focus.

“Eye of a Tiger”