Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s first solo show in New York opened last week. The British-Nigerian artist’s last works, large photographs of the naked male body, are on display at the Walther Collection in New York City. These are images of rites which explore the artist’s familial background as keepers of the shrine in Ife, Nigeria, and the artist’s status as liminoid. Fani-Kayode’s interest in Yoruba ‘techniques of ecstasy’ is juxtaposed against a sombre thinking into sexuality, race, and religion, as discourses of the body. [Read more...]
Nothing to Lose? The art of Rotimi Fani-Kayode
March 28, 2012 By 2 Comments
‘Lesbians Seeing Lesbians’
September 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The South African photographer Zanele Muholi is exhibiting some of her work–at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation (26 Wooster Street) as part of an exhibition of contemporary photographers, “Lesbians Seeing Lesbians: Building Community in Early Feminist Photography” Here’s a link to the catalog essay. The exhibition, which opened earlier this month, is on till October 22.
Gandhi in Africa
April 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Relevant (longish) excerpt from Anita Desai’s review of Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India in The New York Review of Books:
Well deserved
December 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Before we close out the year we have to give a nod to the Centre for Development of People (CEDEP) in Malawi, has won the 2010 AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA) HIV, TB and Human Rights Award. ARASA is a partnership of over 50 civil society organisations working together to promote a human rights based response to HIV and TB in the SADC region. In 2010, CEDEP was instrumental in successfully mobilising international and regional support for the release of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, arrested in Malawi on December 28 2009, on charges of “gross indecency and unnatural acts” after they engaged in a same-sex civil union. They were sentenced to 14 years imprisonment with hard labour, but received a Presidential pardon following pressure from regional and international bodies. CEDEP winning this award is also especially relevant in the current climate of increasing anti homosexuality in the region. Just in the last few weeks news of a wave of anti homosexuality has once again hit the region with countries moving with co-ordinated purpose to eliminate the rights of sexual minority groups. At the United Nations, African and Arab nations succeeded in deleting three words from a resolution that would have included gays in a denunciation of arbitrary killings. Surprisingly, South Africa also supported the removal of these words from the draft resolution – given that South Africa’s Constitution–as an exception in Southern Africa–protects the rights of sexual minorities.–Brett Davidson.
New Sara Baartman Film
April 22, 2010 By 4 Comments
I just finished an essay (with my research assistant Adam Esrig) on new developments in African film–most notably the business model of Nollywood, the emergence of South Africa as a cheap back lot for B-grade Hollywood films and TV commercials, and developments around “Beur” Cinema) for a new book on African cinema. In the process I came across a reference to the work of the French-Tunisian director, Abdellatif Kechiche. He is apparently working on a new film, “Black Venus,” about Sara Baartman, the 18th century Khoi teenager publicly exhibited as a circus freak in Europe and whose sexual organs were prodded and examined by racist French scientists to prove the Khoi’s close relation to animals.
Not much is known is reported about the film except that Kechiche has been working on it since 2008 (when casting began), that he uses mainly non-professional actors and that the film will explore his usual theme of immigration. Also that it should premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival in September, although that’s not entirely clear from the festival’s website.
Anybody else know more?
Debating Sexuality in South Africa
March 24, 2010 By 1 Comment
As @ekapa correctly noted in his comment on my post about “Homophobia as National Sport” in South Africa, “… depressing as this is its a symptom/result of the increasingly vocal and visible African and Coloured activists who are no longer willing to hide and suffer in silence but now demand the rights and protections set out in the South African constitution.“
So I am posting this excerpt from the excellent South African TV program, “The Big Debate.” Though the format encourages “conflict,” we get to see South Africans debate the relationship between sex and culture. In this clip (12 minutes long) they debate whether homosexuality is un-African. It will surprise you.
Homophobia as National Sport
March 22, 2010 By 5 Comments
This may make for depressing reading with your breakfast, but there’s nothing new about the entrenched homophobia in South Africa, a place where men rape lesbians to “correct” them, a government minister last month refused to open a state-funded exhibition featuring photographic images of intimacy between gay women (the image above is an example), and Jacob Zuma, the country’s president, once said that when he was growing up gay men would not have stood in front of him. “I would knock him out.”
Wet Dreams
January 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
What popular images did young American males in the 1950s and 1960s–fed on a diet of parochial media–have of Arabs. For one, they took their cues from men’s adventure magazines: “… In those days, [Arab] tended to conjure up images of sheiks, harems and desert adventure in the Lawrence of Arabia style.”
KENYA TO CONDUCT “CENSUS” OF GAY POPULATION
October 29, 2009 By 2 Comments
So Uganda, with the help of their rightwing, American Christian boosters, want to “wipe out” gay people by making laws that bans even thinking about it. Now Kenya wants to do a “census” of its gay population. Their excuse is this is a way to fight AIDS. This is when it is common knowledge that most people infected with HIV and AIDS are straight and being gay is illegal (homosexual activity is punishable by up to 14 years in jail in Kenya).
AFRICA, AIDS AND HOMOPHOBIA
October 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Edwin Cameron, the first openly gay judge on South Africa’s Constitutional Court (the equivalent of the US Supreme Court; try that on the US court) is in New York City next week to receive a prize (The James Robert Brudner ’83 Memorial Prize worth $5000) from Yale University and give two lectures: one on LGBT Rights and a second on “Africa, AIDS, and Homophobia: The Other Epidemic.” You may remember that Cameron is also HIV positive and was one of the first people to call out former President Thabo Mbeki on the latter’s disastrous AIDS policies.
Here is a link to the event details.
The organizers is billing Cameroon as “… the man who wrote sexual orientation into South Africa’s Constitution.”
