• Q: Your work often features yourself in it. Would you say that this is an endeavour to place the Black female body onto canvas and into creative spaces?

     

    A: Yes it is. 
     
    Q:  You work in mixed media, and this is just a personal interpretation, but I perceive your work as having a patterned effect of leaves and fingerprints. Is this interpretation correct and if so, was this effect deliberate?
     
    A: I am a Multidisciplinary Artist, working with different mediums to create mixed media work comprising printmaking, painting, ceramics, glass and photography which is an integral part of my practice and it is a medium that is consistent in all my work.
     
    The prints are usually a fusion between photolithography, linocut, watercolour, blind embossing and stencilling.  The paintings use paint splashes, photography and collage. The ceramic sculptures are made from terracotta and stoneware clay figures with lithography and scarification on the ceramic body/surface. 
     
    The layering of mediums is symbolic for the multilayers of existence and identity. As humans, we are multifaceted and nuanced. It is about being able to exist in a time where you can redefine your context, that is re-contextualising historical, cultural and colonial definitions around your personhood and identity, while acknowledging one’s contemporary inclinations and personal convictions.
     
     For the patterned effect of my art, I draw from Neorographic art which is organic in appearance. It serves as a metaphor for improvisation, meditation, femininity (womanhood) and the ripple effect. In the context of behavioural psychology, the ripple effect refers to how one action, whether positive or negative, big or small, has drastic changes on other aspects of your life. 
     
    Q:  Your artistic approach is to use ‘the curator as artist’ and the ‘artist as curator’. Can you please elaborate on this.
     
    A: My artistic approach is experimental, includes interventions, site specific work and is process driven. Technical acumen and expending dialogue/ contributing to art history are some of my objectives. I have a 7 year background in curatorship, working in a museum and multiple galleries. I believe this influences my artistic practice and how I engage with my art. I first encountered the expression through ‘Ways of Curating’ by Hans Ulrich Obrist, which I came across earlier in my practice. It has since inspired the approach I have when dealing with the relationship between my artwork, objects and the ideas around them - I try to focus the attention on the body of work rather than an individual artwork.
     
    “The artist-curated exhibition seems to dissect and destabilise what we might refer to as established curatorial traditions, and is, in this sense, often self-reflexive, examining and referencing… histories, but simultaneously disagreeing with them.” See the link here:  https://curatingthecontemporary.org/2015/04/30/curator-as-artist-as-curator/. 
     
    Q: Your subject matter continuously interrogates the perception of mental health within Black communities, particularly amongst Black women. With that your work challenges the stereotype and cultural trope of the ‘strong Black women’. Would you say this iss a correct interpretation?
     
    A: My practice began as an interrogation of perceptions around mental health within Black communities, particularly stereotypes & cultural tropes i.e. ‘the strong black women’. It has since expanded to address the engagement of social life & cultural sentiments as they become prescriptive roles & expectations. Here I offer commentary on trying to reconcile the conflict between socio-cultural sensibilities and neo-contemporary influences. An artist’s practice is however not linear and my work tends to circle back and forth through these themes.  Mental health is still a greatly underrepresented subject on the continent, with many suffering in silence. In my current body of work, I delve into art therapy as a means of exploring coping strategies through artistic expression.
     
    Q: What would you say are the dangers of the trope and cultural stereotype of the 'strong Black woman'?
     
    A: The stigma associated with an inability to cope in a fast paced world. The expectation is that one should be of limitless tenacity. To go without receiving the necessary care when genuinely struggling with a debilitating mental condition, is a dismissal of the truth that one is human. 
     
    Q: Would you say that this trope has an impact on Black women having the courage to seek mental health care?
     
    A: Socio-cultural sensibilities particularly in the Xhosa culture (which I address as my matriarchal lineage) often suggest that such struggles are a sign of a weakness which must be hidden, as it is associated with an affliction of bad luck, dark spirits (which must be expelled), and a lack of gratitude or a lack of ‘faith’. 
     
    Q:  In what way would you say that the mental health of women of colour is compounded by sexism and racism? Moreover, would you say that this impacts the ability for Black women to seek mental health care?
     
    A: Yes, given that the subject of healthcare is complicated by availability and access. 
     
    Q: Why do you think there is a discrepancy between (African) culture and mental health within Black communities and more broadly, communities of colour?
     
    A: There is still a great deal of awareness needed around the subject and historical and cultural ideologies still persist.