Dr Christine
Checinska
Associate
Researcher, VIAD, University of Johannesburg
Founder and
Convener of the Clothes, Cloth & Culture Group, Iniva, London
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Exhibition Installation View, Hypersampling Identities,
Jozi Style, FADA Gallery (Ground Floor), University of Johannesburg.
Photograph by Thys Dullaart, Image Courtesy of VIAD Research Centre
|
Groundbreaking,
energetic, innovative, vibrant, robust, boisterous, vital…
All words that could be used to describe
the University of Johannesburg, Visual Identities in Art and Design Research
Centre’s, (VIAD), recent series of ‘Encounters’ designed to examine the
refashioning of masculinities within contemporary black cultural movements in
Johannesburg.
Under the title (Re)-Fashioning
Masculinities: Identity, Difference, Resistance, the ‘Encounters’ took as their
departure point the concurrent exhibition ‘Hypersampling Identities: Jozi
Style.’
The exhibition showcased the work of young homegrown male designers and design
collectives as well as that of photographers, sartorial groups and ‘trend
setters’. The Isikothane were amongst the featured groups, whilst the Sartists
and the Khumbula were amongst the prominent design collectives on show. The
cultural practitioners included Jamal Nxedlana. Many of the contributors
referenced the Pantsulas and the Swenkas; more established black cultural movements.
I was invited to deliver key lectures and a performative response. Since the
work that I have been engaged in over the past fifteen years, including the
setting up of the Clothes, Cloth and Culture Group here in the Stuart Hall
Library, has been concerned with the relationship between fashion, textiles,
culture and race, I was only to happy to do this.
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Exhibition Installation View, Hypersampling Identities, Jozi Style, FADA Gallery (Ground Floor), University of Johannesburg. Photograph by Thys Dullaart, Image Courtesy of VIAD Research Centre
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Our three-day debate wrestled with the
concept of ‘hypersampling’ itself, the performance of masculine identities
through the intermeshing of music, dance, gesture and dress, the ever-present
hierarchies of power and value based primarily on race and culture,
self-representation by referencing the past and by referencing an imagined
future, the consumption of (global) African styles, critical
‘whiteness’/critical ‘blackness’, i.e. positionality and mindful analysis, and
the notion of the Black Dandy. As expected, and indeed as I had hoped, we
raised far more questions than we were able to answer.
The astute facilitation of the VIAD team –
Leora Farber, Claire Jorgensen, Maria Fidel Rigueros – ensured that the tensions
between voices, that at times clearly sat on the opposite sides of a given
argument, were held and used to creative effect, generating un-familiarly rich
intellectual discussions. Particularly refreshing was the insistence on the
foregrounding of the work produced by the practitioners. This calls to mind the
artist Sonia Boyce’s recent critique of the confounding brushing aside of
certain artists’ work in order to solely focus on issues connected to race. The
two must be addressed; the work itself and the political debates emanating from
the work.
Ó Christine Checinska, October 4th 2015
‘Hypersampling Identities: Jozi Style’ was produced by VIAD in
association with VIAD post-doctoral fellow Daniela Goeller and Lifestyle and
Pop Culture Trend Analyst, Nicola Cooper.
