Five Photographers exhibition
Dwang #1, giclee print on 100% cotton artist paper, 40 cm diameter, edition: 10 (2013).
“Through looking we negotiate social relationships and meanings. Looking is a practice much like speaking, writing, or signing. Looking involves learning to interpret and, like other practices, looking involves relationships of power”
In my works on show I investigate and try to make visible the ways in which white masculinity is performed. I don’t strictly consider or interpret performance in a literal sense of the word, only - I am interested in different traditions and contexts that represent specific aspects of rituals of power and how these are performed ands shapes my own notion of Self.
The Dwang portraits are informed by a personal childhood memory - although they might ostensibly appear erotic, these images are a re-enactment of my own unpleasant experience of public medical examinations that all pre-adolescent boys in white state schools were subjected to during the 1980s. These examinations were commonplace during the apartheid years and were performed by state doctors who approached the affair much like a vet would mass livestock inoculation.
By replacing the model with an adult male, and placing myself in the position of purpetrator, I want to question issues of agency and complicity, and where that leaves me today in articulating my own identity.
Dwang #2, giclee print on 100% cotton artist paper, 40 cm diameter, edition: 10 (2013).
These images are part of an exhibition Five Photographers at David’s Choice Gallery. The exhibition showcases the work of five contemporary South African artists who work in the medium of photography and includes works by Steven Bosch and Robert Hamblin. The exhibition has been extended until end of September 2013.
READ A REVIEW of the Dwang series: Confronting Afrikaners’ cultural masochism - Ang Lloyd via Africa is a Country.
