(This article was originally published on the 18th of September, 2018)
Vusumzi Nkomo
I say a word, or two. She returns a word, a few or more. “The interview started 5 minutes ago, Kenyaa”. I warn(ed) her. While I’m thinking of this risky behaviour, this unconventional conduct, which is to say, a negation of convention (internal to the Black radical [aesthetic] tradition), she bursts out in a soft giggle. “Cool, that’s dope!” She thinks it’s genius. (Game recognizes game, I guess).
An authoritative voice of this/our post-Fallism (de/colonial?) moment. Kenyaa. With her abounding and rare sensitivity. We meet at Raptor Room (@ the heArt of Cape Town) on the aftermath of #TotalShutdown (not that it matters, or does it?). @ the Raptor to talk// confabulate, about an imminent&necessary Rapture. We do not talk much about the past, which thrusts itself forcefully into the present with patient persistency. Nothing ahistorical about her arguments though. We talk about this ‘moment’ exhaustively, + it’s offspring = the impending future.
Black womxn, are, under-/mis-, (re)presented, in, mainstream, arts/+ the media, full, stop. And this shit stops-with-her. This seems to be at the heArt of her protest art. The agenda is emotionally charged, political and urgent. To (re)claim the narrative, to subvert the normative, to invent a black-Womxn political lexicon that seeks to ARTiculate and disarticuLATE a collective invisibility which has become synonymous with Black-womxn (non)existence in the South African creatives’ art industry.
We both think/know there’s more. And it is this excess that disgusts her. & We had arranged to meet eons ago but our clashing schedules (or the naughty gods of art?) had other plans. On a cold Tuesday afternoon, we meet at the student frequented joint, Raptor Room, populated by mostly whites except for the waiters. Kenyaa ‘emerges’ (she’s probably sick of this word: she made it to the DesignIndaba’s 2018 ‘Emerging’ Creatives thingie not long ago) clad in a jovial mood, despite the cruel weather. I’m sick of this wor(l)d too, my dear Kenyaa.
To (re)claim the narrative, to subvert the normative, to invent a black-Womxn political lexicon
Nothing but the poetry of her presence.
Kenyaa Mzee. is a 2nd year Film student at City Varsity, a stone’s throw from the Republik’s parliament. But, as she warns, she’s a writer “before anything.” But I’m here to learn about that “anything.” She goes on: “I started writing first, and then the writing informed my conceptual photography. I write about everything, fiction, nonfiction, story books, film scripts and scripts that take forever to finish.” It is at this point that I learn of her ‘cheesy’ (cheesy because it is not as ‘dangerous’ as her work: What Happened, Miss Mzee?) penname.
Her work is dangerous, disruptive. But, “disruptive sounds too hectic,” she intervenes before I get carried away. “The reason I do art is to create dialogue . . . I pose a question, a picture, a comment, put it out there, mostly social justice issues, social commentary, a hot topic, important topics. I want people to start talking.” Fair enough *sigh*
The best interviews are those where the interviewee starts to answer questions before you even ask them. Kenyaa does this like a boss. “My work can be offensive, you know, to some people. Some people can be touched.” She goes on to mention who she’s talking to through/in her art: “It needs to be seen by Black people but it needs to get to the people who need to talk about it. The people I want to make uncomfortable. People who are comfortable but there’s a problem. If there’s a form of oppression, violence, it needs to be spoken about.”
Kenyaa’s work is a visual language that seeks to make reality “say what it would not have been able to say by itself or . . . easily had left unsaid,” as Sony Labou Tansi, the bard and native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, would have us believe. The task is not a stroll in the park, it’s a lot of woolly-mammoth-work, and more so in Cape Town & the visual artist is aware of this.
If there’s a form of oppression, violence, it needs to be spoken about
“Creatives are not helping each other in Cape Town; you are on your own. We’re too cool to talk to one another. But all creatives hang in the same spots . . . but we won’t speak to one another. Talking about a talented creative and mentioning how excellent they are is really not a thing in Cape Town,” she laments with a deep sense of melancholy. Many artists, creatives, have expressed similar concerns about the City and its art scene. Kenyaa hammers even harder: “we make creativity a class thing, it’s heavily cliquey, heavily classy, you need to tick these boxes, look this way, sound this way, and it’s the same visual artists, you’re not getting a different narrative.”
The notion of the ‘narrative’ seems to be an important factor in how she imagines a transformed art industry that is ‘authentically’ South African. “I think in South Africa we’re finding our feet in telling authentic African stories, stories told well, produced well. So we’re getting there,” she adds. At the centre of her work, which is to say her politics, is the straining against the invisibility of Black womxn in the telling of these stories. This violent phenomenon, reproduced as a norm in the arts industry, is explored in her recent body of work, which she amply refers to as “Comply”.
Hollywood is Dead
Kenyaa adds that “as Black women we’re there but we’re not seen. Just because we want to see ourselves doesn’t mean we just want to see ourselves, you know what I mean? I want attention to detail, it’s not enough to have a female-only cast!” As a filmmaker, she felt that Black Panther was “uh-uh”, or something like that: “the casting of Black strong women was excellent, no longer the Hollywood staple, the drunk baby mama, the ratchet.” She marvelled (see what I done did there?) at the fact that now these characters were/had love interests. But.
“Hollywood is Dead. If they are not stealing stories, they are remaking old stories. Boring and monotonous. They have nothing left, biographies, sequels. Bringing back old characters, actors,” the pessimist in her, like Abel in the poet Lesego Rampolokeng’s gritty novel “Bird Monk Seding”, strikes a blow not only at contemporary cinema but the whole Anglo-Saxon cinematic archive. The academy, the tertiary institution, is a consequence of this death&dearth and this banality, which she accuses of making the sojourning students “hate film, not the actual film but the process.”
I, like Kenyaa, like Abel, dream of a World that is better than this. A world where young people create out of pure inventiveness, not as means to revolt against a world that has proven itself to be uninhabitable for most(ly) Black bodies.
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