On December 5, 6, 7 at MAN_Museum in Nuoro I had the opportunity to take part in a photography workshop on self-representation with Zanele Muholi and Lindeka Qampi, who were in Sardinia thanks to an Artist in Residence programme. Muholi and Qampi are South-African photographers, known at an international level for their visual activism. Their work is based on experimentation and use of self-representation as a method and narrative process for the self-determination of their communities. In fact, it gives visibility to emarginated and discriminated cultures, aiming at an aesthetic, visual and social liberation”.
The proposal was: “During the workshop we will deal with different subjects: from visual activism to community archive, from the family story to the self-portrait, up to the digital era of selfie (self-identification).
Also, the workshop will deal with activism, community, participation, action and social responsibility.”
I've been following Zanele's work for years: with her photos, she has given a huge contribution on representing and building a lesbian and LGBTQ imagination that goes beyond South Africa, as well as I am glad that I had the chance to know Lindeka's work too. Both of them had already had exhibitions in Sardinia but, together with the workshop, it was their first time at MAN, in Nuoro. AZOLA / Somnyama Ngonyama was curated by Emanuela Falqui, Erik Chevalier and Laura Farneti (…), a selection of works focusing on visual activism and self-representation politics, plus a new series of photos made in Sardinia.
Workshop participants also took part in the exhibition with their own works: Cristina Pira / Alessandra Cecchetto / Anna Zurru / Gigi Murru / Stefano Pia / Emanuela Cau / Simone Loi / Lucia Cadeddu / Katia Marroccu / Veronica Muntoni / Medea Laura Pace / Stefania Muresu / Leonardo Boscani / Rita Delogu / Chiara Coppola / Giulia Casula / Melania Massa / Moju Manuli / Paolo Bianchi / Franco Casu / Michela Mereu / Antonio Mannu / Francesca Corriga.
Right after the first day meeting, we were asked to self-represent ourselves and I felt I was in trouble. I spent hours thinking and brainstorming and, finally, thanks to the fact that we were tight on time, I opted for a work on symbols: I chose items which were important and meaningful for me, so I adorned myself with them.
I depicted myself as a bruja, with a series of snaps where my eyes were surrounded by a black paint. It highlight them but also to create a kind of mask (a bit like a super-heroine), playing with the in/visibility discourse. I wore the red lipstick and my most cherished clothes and jewels: my Dorgalese shawl, called mesisallu, made in tibet tissue embroidered with red roses; my vardetta, a traditional Sardinian everyday gown, which belonged to my grandmother; a prainnostres, an ancient necklace of black stones and golden buttons that was also worn by my grandmother; a red pearl necklace, a gift from a sister-friend, Jelly; a Sardinian wedding ring and sas loricas de rodedda, my traditional earrings.
Usually when I take picture of myself, I give a strong and symbolic value to the items and positions that I choose. For this work, I chose two main lines that characterize my path: Sardinian and Mediterranean identity, and lesbianism – ancient paganism, tied to the figure of Mother Earth, permeates the whole thing as usual.
I started from my body and, lacking other available spaces, I worked at home (an sweet little old house made of stone, like a shell, where we had to throw things all over the place to carve out some room to work).
Self-representing myself is never easy, and again, this time has been tough, sacred, a game, love, also some frustration, and discovery. I had to understand, in a very short time, who I was, in order to tell it, show the naked me and be “on stage”, above all for myself.
As long as I took pictures, I also started to play a bit in front of the lens, trying different “figures”.
I made some interesting self-portraits, but the most meaningful shots for me are the ones I took with Melania, with whom I shared the workshop's days. Starting as “homeworks”, they cause a lot of thoughts, as she is a friend that moves a lot ot things inside me, like a little muse who sparkled desires and creativity. I called this shots Suta 'e s'ajone (under the cork vessel in Sardinian) and I chose to display here the last picture of the series, because I especially love it.
In the picture of the two of us, I tried to send a message, both to the “others” - lesbians and women with whom I am tied with invisible and powerful bounds – and to myself, as if to find myself again, re-arrange my ever-changing identity, and match with myself.
Usually, I represent myself alone, but this time I chose to do it together with another woman to highlight my identity as a lesbian and what goes with it. Because to define yourself as a lesbian you go through the bond with another “she”and the relationship with other women: I thus stressed the relationship as a part of oneself identity.
We gaze each other directly creating a connection; feelings blend while we lie under the ancient stones; the red, the olive, the black, the white and the blue are a shelter for us; sleep looms over us; always, never, out of time, everywhere, anywhere we choose and nowhere; under s'ajone, the cork vessel, like we were under a mushroom or a safe hiding place. S'ajone, mainly used to carry meals, is another magical reference to what feeds and nourishes us: in this case, we are our own nourishment.
So, in order to be me I had to be with another woman.
I am not a photographer and this is not a a “great picture”, but I have ve put all of these elements inside of it.
Matching with this vision, I quoted an excerpt from “Monique Wittig, Cantora dell'Indicibile” by Simonetta Spinelli:
<The lesbian body, the twisting of literary and linguistic rules – mixing up of literary genres, overindulgence with images and words, a continuos game of hyperboles – reaches its peak. The everyday time is dismantled and re-composed in the time of desire and the space broadens and tightens in order to meet the materiality between two women bodies. A fundamental materiality of subjects which are moving, transhumant, in the making, beyond the roles, agents of desire and acted by desire: the lover/loved, the loved/lover. In the relationship between two women motivated by desire – the one for the other, the other for the one – everything is scattered, everything is reconsidered. There are no boundaries because only the impulse towards an “other” knowledge, triggered by desire, exists. Between the lover/loved and the loved/lover, a practice of love is built, which is frenzy for knowledge, so “other” by what is codified that it has to invent its own language and practice, it needs to create its own system of signs.
The lesbian body, a body of desire from a woman towards a woman, can not be represented in conventional terms. It is the impudent body which lives the forbidden, it is the body which can not be domesticated, made as an object, parcelled. It is not only breasts, vagina, gluteuses, but also derma, cells, muscles, tendons, humors, fibers, veins, arteries, marrow, and the path of love becomes the epic – interspersed with lists humorously drawn from medical handbooks – of a search during which everything has to be rediscovered, re-signified, to match the desire which originates it. The subject of that desire and path is, in turn, a subject which deals with the risk of losing itself, its own boundaries, the risk of disintegrating in order to rebuild itself in a desiring body.
A lesbian body. Neither feminine nor masculine, because feminine and masculine are the result of a convention that the lesbian body, in its deconstruction/reconstruction of itself for itself, makes senseless because it belongs to another – alien – system of signs.
Witting leaves no room for misunderstandings: a woman is not enough for building up the existence of the lesbian body, so two women are needed, both lover/lived, desiring/desired from the other and both motivated, by that very desire, on building its liveability, its language, the practis, on “acknowledging in another semiotic” (T.deLauretis, Differenza e indifferenza sessuale, Estro, 1989).>>
I dedicate this work to Luki Massa & Fuoricampo Lesbian Group, that for years insisted on lesbian visibility, granting us a huge amount of incentives with activities and festivals, so we could enrich our identity, culture and lesbian knowledge.
...visibility in terms of undeniable claim of the existence as lesbian. Lesbianism is revolutionary when it is visible and lesbian visibility is essential to deconstruct models and stereotypes.(...)
Visibility as self-representation of the lesbian specificity, inside and outside the community, through elaboration and construction of thought and actions: community is visibility.
