Video
Who Am I
“The question, ‘who am I?’ is not meant to get an answer, the question ‘who am I?’ is meant to dissolve the questioner.” - Ramana Maharshi
Who am I is a performance monologue piece that I wrote. In this performance, I am reciting the monologue with no script and I am attempting to remember the words of the monologue. The nature of this process, together with the dragging dreading sound of the performance itself, speaks back to the long and dreaded journey of finding yourself in this world. Who am I is a direct question; to question your existence, your purpose and ask more questions. It operates as a totalizing but entry level question that begins the journey of identity. As I fumble through the question, you begin to realise that who we are is not one thing but a whole layered system of our ideas, thoughts, memories, experiences, relationships and values.
eXPERIMENTAL VIDEOS
In this body of work, I am exploring ideas of navigating in space, entering politics of disorientation, disruption and possibly chaos. I am inspired by Sara Ahmed’s ideas that she expressed in her text titled the “Queer Phenomenology”. Exploring what it means for the body to be situated in space and in time, where bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves towards or away from objects and others. Ahmed speaks to this idea of how social relations are arranged spirally , how queerness disrupts and reorders these relations by not following the accepted paths, and how politics of disorientation puts other objects within reach. This is what I aim to explore in this body of work and also touching on navigation as a queer fat black person in both the heteronormative world and the queer community.
umzimba
UMZIMBA is a series that started as an extension to Mele oa Ka. UMZIMBA is a Zulu word which means the body. I decided to title this extension ‘UMZIMBA’ because was intrigued with the idea of think of the body as the home of the spirit. When you break down the word ‘UMZIMBA’, ‘UMZI’ – means home and ‘MBA’ – means the spirit.
