Contra.Joburg
25.05 - 26.05.2024
In a small studio, just off the main courtyard of the Transwerke Studios at Constitution Hill, antique cupboards and shelves stood with their doors ajar, the dark wood stark against white walls. At this year’s Contra.Joburg, the immersive two-day open studio experience in Johannesburg (previously OpenStudios.Joburg), the art collective ‘everything in; out’ presented their exhibition their closets, their caskets (part i) – the first of two exhibitions exploring queer expressions of loss and rebirth. The seven artists – Collen Mfazwe, Erin Sweeney, Lerato Mbawu, Nate Thomas, Siyababa, Troye Alexander and Wandie M – all use photography to explore queerness within a South African context, but through a distinctive language. their closets, their caskets (part i) archives the various visages and versions of queerness that exist.
Closets used as mounts for artworks, play on the idea of the closet as a site of queer exploration. The exhibition wrestles with themes of secrecy and grief, which often accompany and characterise the queer experience. The symbolic death of the self represents the process of transformation; the closeted self dies and becomes reborn as the liberated self. As explained in the exhibition text, “the closet transcends conventional queer allegory: it becomes a resting place for transformation and rebirth, and also the inevitable retreat that precedes and/or accompanies liberation.”
Installation View: their closets, their caskets (part i), Contra.Joburg, 2024
Mbawu‘s photographs, which populated a cupboard’s outer walls and doors, featured sumptuous compositions of subjects draped in fabric or posed in front of extravagant backgrounds, reminiscent of baroque paintings. The dramatic lighting in Sexual Tension, a photograph capturing a figure facing away from the viewer and holding a large piece of tulle, reminded me of the chiaroscuro painting technique – often associated with Caravaggio. In FOES of Man 03, the subject is draped in lustrous purple fabric, their head partly covered and their eyes downturned, resembling the iconic image of Jesus’ mother in The Virgin in Prayer by Sassoferrato. This Mary-like figure gives the image distinct religious overtones. On the opposite wall, Thomas’ photographs line a bookcase’s shelves. Thomas’ kaleidoscopic portraits reflect their subject adorned in scarves and a pearl necklace, their arms lifted in a gesture of dance – the body becomes a medium through which to explore pattern and symmetry. “His work inspects the act of coming out, and how this rite of passage weaves itself into the tapestry of gay culture.” The tension between these two versions of the self is similarly explored in Mbawu’s works, the figures seeming at once confident and solemn, sensual and pensive. They straddle two aspects of their identities.
Installation View: their closets, their caskets (part i), Contra.Joburg, 2024
Wandie M and Alexander use grief as a point of departure in their works. In Alexander’s series, Gold Dust Cowboy, the subject wears their mother’s clothing as a kind of ‘material remembrance’. For many queer children, wearing another’s clothes is their first introduction to toying with different gender expressions and exploring identity. The subject’s use of clothing as a mnemonic device encapsulates Alexander’s own experience of loss and grief following the death of his foster mother. In this way, the artist’s personal experience directly informs his visual storytelling.
In Wandie M’s blurry self-portraits, the artist first crouches away from the damning camera lens in Trapped, then slowly begins to face the camera in Consent and Rejection. “Prompted by their hesitance to stand naked in front of the lens, M uses out-of-focus self-portraiture as a catapult in testifying about the transformative power of radical acceptance.” In Unapologetic, the figure stands upright, defiantly taking on the lens and exemplifying that radical self-acceptance. The progression seen in these works mirrors the process of coming out and links back to the overarching theme of the closet as a site of rebirth and the gradual unfurling of identity.
Through his monochromatic portraits, Mfazwe unpacks what it means to be a black trans man in Johannesburg, and he explores queerness in relation to place. The choice of exhibiting his works in the Transwerke building, just minutes away from City Deep, therefore seems fitting. Johannesburg is best encapsulated by those areas traditionally branded as ‘dangerous’ or rough around the edges – Newtown, Doornfontein, City Deep, and Braam. The difficulties of navigating a bustling city become compounded by the fear of public perception, and queer people are often the most at risk. In Olumiyo, the subject’s face is covered by a plastic bag, seemingly suffocating. The image is striking and emotionally charged, making the viewer instantly uncomfortable. The work possibly alludes to the feeling of being suffocated by the numerous social constraints that keep queer people restricted and afraid. The portraits are a testament to the realities which face the black trans-masculine community in a city like Johannesburg, where the environment itself was designed to support a heteronormative, mining-industrial complex.
Erin Sweeney, we said goodbye here, 2023.
Similarly, Sweeney’s work is firmly rooted in an exploration of place. The artist photographed stickers with phrases like ‘we met here’ and ‘we fell in love here’, placed at different points in the city – on a wall above a line of post boxes, on a telephone pole, and on a cross beam. Each photograph has a digital coordinate stamp, placing each work at a particular location. The absence of a timestamp perhaps indicates the timelessness of each work. Sweeney’s photographs are accompanied by a zine, chronicling the love story between two characters. Greyscale photographs are overlayed with the same phrases and coordinates, and the zine features a poem which tells the story of a love gained and lost, from one of the character’s perspectives. The work is a reminder of the softness and care that can and does exist in queer relationships, challenging the conservative narrative that seeks to over-sexualise queer love. The viewer is presented with a sentimental archive of places where love once existed and became lost. This directly contrasts the works by Siyababa, which interrogate the hypermasculinity that characterises much of Zulu culture. In Untitled, two men arm wrestle, their working hands covered in an opaque liquid. The men look one another in the eye, the ‘male-on-male gaze’ becoming threatening and combative. The act of arm-wrestling speaks to a culture of competition that exists in male spaces, which is perpetuated by patriarchal social hierarchies. In this frame of reference, there is no space for tenderness or softness in the relationships men have with one another. Queerness, therefore, which is often associated with femininity, also has no place in this social structure of hypermasculine competition and aggression.
Despite the variety of styles and perspectives, their closets, their caskets managed to tie all the works together, as if they were part of a singular story, emphasising a visual sense of place, grief and liberation.
Siyababa, Untitled, 2024.
