Volume 1 issue 1 MAX BOUFATHAL JEFFERY CALLAHAN NKULE MABASO

EXHIBITION Nkule mabaso My work stems from an interest in the literature and media produced around black women, their representation, their hair and how their contemporary identities are historically constructed. The initial investigation was around finding out the real reasons women develop close identification with their hair in all societies, where long hair represents all that is irrefutably feminine and forms part of the cultural definition of femininity and feminine sensuality. This definition obviously excludes black women s hair in its natural state. The current trends of superficiality lead to women s obsessive compulsion with hair which borders on the excessive, especially black women. African women in South Africa feel that in order to be accepted by their counterparts and people that they are associated with, they have to conform to popular stereotypes and prescription of what it means to be beautiful. This entails altering one s physical appearance with the most ridiculous hairstyles that make them contemptuous. They end up having to spend a lot of money just to keep up this utterly ridiculous trend of having artificial material on one s head. Their other more serious responsibilities are compromised. These yearnings for attractiveness are fueled by the desire to appear appealing to men. which invest it with meanings and value but also as a material that readily adapts itself to creativity in a multitude of expressive appearances. By looking at some of the defining things like length and color I m interested in using the hair or that which is added to the hair in a way that disrupts or enhances our understanding of it as hair. The multivalent layers of meaning embedded in hair are combed into complex art pieces that grapple with different fundamental concepts of hair, the body, and identity. Hair becomes a metonym for the body and once it s off the body it assumes discomforting associations that extend its meaning as a substance. My use of excessive amounts of hair plays to the idea that excess hair is transgressive and is understood as a symptom of sex embedded in disease as is often illustrated by the murky sexual identities of overly hairy women and the undesirable aspect of uncontrollable hair growth. Maybe the most important thing that I am trying to achieve with my work is to further challenge the prescriptive stereotypes that many people unquestioningly prescribe and subject themselves to in relation to how they project themselves to the outside world. Specifically, I have identified three areas within which to exploit the connotations and associations of human hair and commercially available synthetic fibres to engage my work s explorations of status and identity, gender identification, and bodily alienation. These themes of race and racism, and physicality and alienation are explored through the use of performance, photography, sculptural form, installation, and the creation of artworks that blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture. In the creation of my work I approach hair as a raw material, not only constantly processed by cultural practices 22

EXHIBITION 25

Exhibition 27

Exhibition 29 Nkule mabaso