Mosadi o tswara thipa ka bogaleng Mixed media

My mixed media artworks explore my identity as a modern black female in the Tswana culture. My works usually consist of subjective explorations which juxtapose my appreciation of my culture and my black feminist criticism of it simultaneously. I use a combination of photographic cut-outs, digital manipulation and an addition of the Shweshwe cloth as the main aspect of this multimedia style to comment on the violence and oppression against black women throughout history, and how it has culminated in various feelings of perplexity – resulting in my problematic identity construction.

In self-depreciating moments, I have seen myself as some kind of an internally bred comprador, a kind of collaborator laundered through white structures from pre-school, high school to university and then completely displaced when having to claim my heritage. While I do love and respect my heritage, there are aspects of it I cannot tolerate, specifically the cultural patriarchy and gender prejudice.

I used the Shweshwe cloth as a metaphor for what the black woman is expected to be; a mother, a wife or makoti, a provider, a domestic as well as a good daughter in law. The Shweshwe cloth is usually worn by women in cultural and domestic settings such as weddings, funerals, traditional ceremonies and rituals. It is for this reason that I have replaced the women’s bodies with the cloth, as it represents what was expected of women and what they were taught to aspire to be.

My work is immensely personal. I cut out bodies of women I am related to out of old family photographs. Cutting them out is significant as I release the sort of disappointment I have in them for being submissive. I also cut out their bodies as an act of inflicting violence onto these bodies just as historically, black women’s bodies have been subject to objectification, demonization and violence. Black South African women are chained by a triple yoke of oppression. Under apartheid, each component of their existence as women; their sex, their colour and their class combine to negate their right to social inequality. This body of work is titled Mosadi o tswara thipa ka bogaleng which means that a woman holds a knife by the blade. This is a bleak reality for black women.