MASIXOLE NCEVU STUDIO

Anthrovision - Digital Journal

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Uniformity, Johannesburg, 2017

From the series “Sunday Streets”

Having a uniform in South African churches camouflages differences between Christians. You find that in some churches that do not have uniforms, some members can wear very expensive clothes while their less privileged counterparts can be washing and wearing the same clothes again and again. This can discourage the less privileged members. Uniforms therefore cover these differences and equates them.

CROSS-SECTIONAL NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION.

The theme of fashion encompasses a diverse range of practices and ideas, including explorations of identity and affiliation, age, gender, positions, waste accumulation, and global industry. I’m interested in exploring the idiomatic expressions in everyday dress, semblances, street fashion, the cultural homogeneity of our society, personal identities, and self-expression as cultural, religious and political statements.

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From the series “Trousers”, Johannesburg, 2017

Smart-dressed men strut with pride in South Africa: “Pantsula” style is the trademark of a Johannesburg Zulu Man. It is associated with gangsters and street dancers, taken from the 60's and 70's. The fashion you can see in the photograph is an affiliated type of “Pantsula”, known as “Oswenkas”, a Zulu version of the English word "swank." The aural history of this fashion varies, according to who is telling the story. It is widely accepted that the style started 40 or 50 years ago among Zulu men came to Johannesburg to work in the gold mines. – Working in the gold mines, while still dressing elegant was not a contradiction.

SEMIOTICS OF FASHION.

This work documents the practice and process of fashioning the body. How do we tell others about power, positionality? how do power structures work through the embodied practices of fashion and dress? Our fashion choices practices intentionally and unintentionally challenge sustained ideologies and set ideas informing about one’s worldview.

Here you see the first three photographs from this ongoing project.

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Bear a Resemblance to, Johannesburg, 2017

There are many people, especially those who have been swallowed by the city of Johannesburg, telling me they regret not knowing more about their family stories. Photographs can help to explore your own family background. It started about a year ago with a vintage photo of my maternal great-grandmother Veni (Fig.1) my aunt found and showed to me. Based on how the photograph’s  aged and the style of clothing shown,I would place it sometime between 1915 and 1920. – Old family photo albums have a big influence in developing my photographic eye, especially in reading visual information, storylines, subjects and settings. 

Recently my grandmother encouraged me to take an active interest in my family history. While looking at photographs and talking about some uncles just disappearing in Johannesburg some years after moving, I wanted to find out more. – Closure is one of the hardest principles for me to come to terms with. It is not that I cannot or do not understand the concept, but rather I have a hard time finding it in real life.

VERNACULAR PHOTOGRAPHY.

For this work my photographs (Fig. 2-6) do not serve as a means of nostalgic recollection but rather as a tool of cognition, reflecting events hidden in subconscious memories, excluded communities and crises of families or individuals. Family photos contain emotional, psychological, and affective qualities that reach further than the individual owner and that should be put forward, also within the fields of aesthetics and humanities. Family photo albums are about social and emotional communication. They can be interpreted as ways of understanding and coming to terms with life. At the same time they document more sociological aspects of daily lives that we do not have access to from other historical sources.

Above you see a collage out of this ongoing body of work.

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From the series “I am the fight with in Me”, Johannesburg, 2017

People with albinism don’t just face health restrictions like skin cancer, involuntary eye movements or poor eyesight. Many of them also suffer severe discrimination and social stigmatization. 

How do skin color or any other external individuality categorize a person socially and how are these issues of social categorisation still relevant today? – I want to understand the behaviors of both the stigmatized and stigmatizers,  examination both sides with regard to what really matters and what is threatened in life.

INFORMANTS.

“I identify myself with the black rather than the white community. My physical differences, though, mean I don’t fit into either the black or white race groups” - says Karabo, 25 years, Johannesburg ( Fig. 4 )

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From the series “Ukubeleka”, Johannesburg, 2017

“Baby-backing”, could hardly be less expensive or more convenient. But apart from being a practical and inexpensive means of transport, baby-backing meets important emotional needs, such as comfort and bonding for the baby and  parent.

CARRYING.

With this work I’m observing the importance of support and moving someone or something from one place to another. Carrying as an evolutionary conserved strategy evolved to increase survival. Carrying as the biological norm for humans.

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Proxemics in Public Spaces, Johannesburg, 2017

Proxemics is the study of space and how humans use it, how it makes humans feel more or less comfortable and how humans arrange objects themselves in relation to space and to maintain social order by regulating human interaction.

Biologist Lancelot Law Whyte (1969) understands the language and the observer in the system:

"As humans, we belong to that component of nature given to organizing and structuring. We not only physically organize ourselves and our environment, but we also organize our perceptions of the physical world into abstract structures. When we project these abstractions back onto the physical world, their usefulness leads us to surmise that they reflect to some degree a structure possessing independent existence."

TERRITORIAL OWNERSHIP.

In Johannesburg, territorial ownership extends to various entities including streets, buildings, areas, objects and other individuals. The process of the personalization of these entities involves management of mentally drawn boundaries.

Above you see the first three photographs towards this ongoing body of work.

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From the series “I am the fight with in me” Johannesburg, 2017

Albinism is an inherited condition with a relatively high prevalence in populations throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. People with oculocutaneous albinism have little or no pigment in their hair, skin and eyes, thus they are visually impaired and extremely sensitive to the damaging effect of the sun on their skin. Aside from health implications there are also significant sociocultural dificulties: The impacts of albinism are particularly serious in areas that associate albinism with legend and folklore, leading to stigmatisation, discrimination and death.

INFORMANT.

"Everyone was brown, and then there was me. I'm a white-skinned black girl, that's how I navigate through the world. That's how I identify." – Siphiwe, 10 years, Johannesburg, 2016

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Dowagers, Johannesburg, 2016

Many media portrayals of the elderly reflect negative cultural attitudes towards aging. In Johannesburg, society tends to glorify youth, associating it with beauty and sexuality. What I have noticed in Johannesburg streets, the elderly are often associated with grumpiness or hostility. Rarely do the roles of older people convey the fullness of life experienced by seniors – as employees, lovers, or the myriad roles they have in real life.

AGEISM AND SOCIETY.

Through participation observations, and collaborative research, this work examines how ageing can be labelled the same as race. It always relates to invisibility, marginalization, social exclusions, old-fashionedness and “uselessness”.  To the extent to which older people do not fit the perceived social norm, they are treated as “less”, which may include less valued. They become relegated to a second class status; their needs and their lives are treated as if they do not matter as much.

I have included the first four photographs based on my ethnographic visual explorations towards this ongoing body of work.

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Basa students, Johannesburg, 2016

Over the past months the South African universities have experienced a rash of riots and protests for free education. This has resulted in student confrontation with the police, university shut down and government interventions. Both the press and TV stations have run continuous stories on this ongoing saga. This has prompted me to a photographic assay of boy and girls in their final years in high school to question them how this unrest has affected their future learning decisions.

EXPLICATING NARRATIVES.

An intellectual curiosity that turned into methodological investigation was the point of departure for this body of work. I’m interested in the outcomes of these choices - decision making process how they reflect an ongoing change or cycle.

I have included the first three photographs towards this ongoing project. 

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Figure 1. Fieldwork sketches of Johannesburg during my first dry season, Johannesburg, 2016

             Ink On Paper.

Here I developed the idea that sketching is a form of (visual) thinking and an embodied and situated practice that reflects cultural norms about being situated, looking, as well as stylistic and representational conventions.

A. B. Deacon describes sketching as  ““drawing intervenes in the reckoning of reality in ways that writing and photography do not” (2011:13)

BLANK CANVAS.

A metaphor for limitless possibilities - is a paradox which creates as many issues as it solves. Be it a blank page, an empty stage, unexposed film or empty memory card, it has no point of view except that which we give it. Infinite potential leads to infinite rumination, and inaction. When anything is possible, where to begin?

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From the project “Feasting”, Johannesburg, 2016 

Food is not only just a simple organic fuel to keep the body and soul together, but also a perishable art that must be savored at the peak of perfection. In South Africa, the meat is called “Skop” It is less costly than other meats and tastier. Some meat sellers in Johannesburg recently learned how to prepare cow heads for their customers. They remove the skin from the head. Then they use an axe to separate the meat from the bones. Much of the Skop meat is sold to sellers who sell food on the street. But at factory, they also cook the meat for customers. Then they put the meat on a large table, not on plates.  They put hot sauce on it, and a starch called “uPhuthu”.

TAKE AWAY. 

Not only referring to food which is ordered in a street restaurant and taken away but rather removing something concrete, taking off, eliminating, or removing something abstract.

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Emic perspectives, Johannesburg, 2016

There are many roles that a visual artist fills. For instance, in smaller cities, having local artists brings a sense of pride to the community. Although I prefer to work alone in the studio and in the field, I am well aware that I am part of a much larger community I play a much larger role than one might anticipate, and I acknowledge that culture is fluid and cannot be treated as isolated in time and space. Just as I should not portray people as primitive vestiges of an earlier stage of human development, I also should not romanticize a culture or idealize another’s suffering as more authentic or natural.

RIGOROUS SCRUNITY.

Observing how people interact with each other, how the environment affects people, and how people affect the environment. 

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To clothe, Johannesburg, 2016

While modern times have seen a move away from the traditional dress for many of the people in Johannesburg, there is still importance in learning more about it and how it informs the culture of the people who wore it.

VERBALISM.

The aim endeavors to grasp a richer understanding of the social forces behind fashion expressions,  how fashions are created, presented, manipulated, updated and ultimately expressed both within and across social groups. 

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Diamond Hair, Johannesburg, 2016

We are all individual, and the parts of our outward appearance that we can control allow us to tell the world who we are, and what we stand for. In a world of growing unrest, and political turbulence, to stand proud with an appearance that sits anywhere out of the norm, is an act of defiance. It is more than defiant, it is brave.

EXPLORATIONS.

In the attempts to develop positive self-images and exploring notions of difference, identity and patterns of interaction.

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Origins of Form, Johannesburg, 2016

Origins of Form in this case is more than about the shape of things.

Geometric forms appear man made and can suggest something solid,balanced and permanent. I have been observing all of these man made objects in Johannesburg and find it interesting that they reminded me of portraits of people,were you can see the traces of life in them. 

I have included the first study/artistic production towards this ongoing body of work.

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From the series “I am the fight with in me”, Johannesburg, 2016

In South Africa, around one in 4 000 people is estimated to be born with albinism, compared with about 1 in 20 000 worldwide, according to ASSA. Apart from eye problems that can lead to blindness and a high vulnerability to skin cancer, people with albinism also face discrimination and stigma.

There is still prejudice at most levels in South Africa. For young people with albinism, finding a job is difficult especially in Johannesburg. For those in a career, the chances of being promoted are slim because you are seen as inadequate.

INFORMANTS.

Discrimination at work is common for those who are luckily employed. “People assume you are weak and will constantly be sick - so they do not hire you”, noted Lungi. Lungi recalls being overlooked for promotion as general manager, because the workers at her company did not want an “albino” as their head.

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From the series “Back seat ”, Johannesburg, 2016

Traveling by taxi is a common method for getting around in Johannesburg. Therefore, the back seat is the most comfortable, but also the most dangerous spot in a taxi. It requires to open the window because of the lack of air condition, but also invites "smash & grab” to steal your valued goods.

SENSORY ETHNONOGRAPHY.

With this work, I am reassessing the concept of “danger spaces“ as a psychological state in which things feel unfamiliar to a person. In these spaces you are not at ease and neither feel in control of your environment while experiencing high levels of anxiety and stress. But choosing this situation by yourself in grabbing the most wanted seat you introduce yourself in a contrary mix of vulnerable feelings.

These are the first nine photographs towards this ongoing body of work.