Putting Pen to Patriarchy: Arts and Activism
From time to time, unexpected setbacks boomerang the back of our heads. They can be lonely to deal with when far from your standard support systems, and frustrating when the only remedies for recovery are time, patience, faith, and forgiveness.
It’s been a couple months, but I’m thrilled to be back to work, back to exploring arts and activism in Kampala, back to figuring where I may fit into that, and back to blogging about it for you.
From boardroom meetings with Eleanor Nabwiso, Ugandan filmmaker, actor and women’s rights advocate, to art studio visits in Naguru, a low-income area I’d been advised to avoid, I’m constantly re-visiting the assumptions I didn’t know I had about the breadth and depth of artistic talent, skills, motivation, and commitment in Uganda. In coming across dancers such as those at Breakdance Project Uganda, poets like Gloria Kiconco, and many artists in between, it’s clear that there’s power in artistic expression here for creating community and driving social change.
Anita Kevyn is another such driver. She is a passionate feminist, fashion blogger (Her Melanated Magic), model, and intern at Uganda’s National Broadcasting Station (NBS). Between arguments about the edibility of mango peels, reading Nayyirah Waheed, episodes of Broad City, French/Arabic lesson attempts, and chocolate pizza, we’ve learned much from each other in understanding and challenging sexism, racism and homophobia across different cultural contexts.
This is Kevyn on Ugandan fashion, pushing back against patriarchy, and the upcoming feminist art exhibition we’re executing:
J: “What excites you about the fashion industry?”
K: “You can wear anything and express any kind of feeling. You can be yourself. The industry is open. People who do fashion are not always educated about it. You can wake up and buy a sewing machine and decide you’re going to do this. You don’t need to go to school. It’s about talent.”
J: “What’s trending in Uganda?”
K: “People are wearing off –shoulder dresses, the African ones, and head wraps. I can’t wrap my head… I don’t know if I look funny or it’s because I don’t know how to wrap that thing but I like it. Baggy clothes — I like the boyfriend pants, they’re so comfortable. Shoes: people are wearing more boots… But not boots boots boots boots. Short ones, not the tall ones! They look like Timberlands. For guys, I like when guys wear chiffon shirts. Throw-ons. Also, African necklaces — I think you know them, and earrings. I like African earrings. I don’t wear them but I feel like I will when I find the right ones.”
J: “How do you express yourself through your personal style?”
K: “I usually wear t-shirts to school and you know those baggy pants of mine? They’re like sweatpants but they have buttons on the side. It depends: sometimes I want to look serious when I’m going to meet people. Of course I have to give them this impression for them to trust me, but it doesn’t matter: I can come to you in a dressed up kind of way, but I have knowledge and opinions to give you that really matter. That’s what matters. I think my style brings out my confidence. I actually wear anything that I wanna wear. I don’t really care how you look at it.”
J: “In addition to the expectation of being dressed seriously to be taken seriously, are there other gender norms and roles that you navigate day to day?”
K: “I’ve met people and they tell me, “Are you a tomboy?” and I’m like, “Nope!” I want to be myself. It doesn’t matter how I’m dressed. I really like to be chill. I don’t want to smile or pretend to be friendly and smiley just because people expect you to have this happy look that’s welcoming. I get judged to be proud but that’s not what I’m trying to give. People are judging you because you’re comfortable. I mean it’s being proud, but there’s this excessive pride that it’s not. I’m okay with myself.”
J: “What are some beauty standards that you face in the industry? How do you challenge them?”
K: “As a model you have to have makeup on, draw eyebrows, and all these things. Flawless face. And I mean… I don’t know how to do makeup! [laughing].
Being too skinny or too big. When I went for as casting with this guy [I wanted to work for] he was like, “You have huge hips,” and I was like, “Dude come on, what are you looking for?” I didn’t get it.
Skin without scars. I went for this casting for a lady who’s a bikini designer. She chose me at first and explained, “We’ll have to check your skin to make sure you don’t have any scars,” and I was like, “Are you serious? No… I’m not doing this”. Basically, it doesn’t matter if someone has scars. Scars are scars.”
J: “How about racism or expectations in terms of skin colour?”
K: “In the fashion industry here? No. They actually like dark-skinned people. But I mean in life, people prefer people who are lighter, generally. We all know that, right? Everybody knows that. Which is so stupid.”
J: “You recently conceptualized and directed a photo-shoot to celebrate Blackness, push for diversity, and promote locally designed swimwear. Tell us about it?”
K: “Yeah it was majorly about beauty and about skin: All different kinds of beauty. It’s why I wanted to have an albino and a plus size model, as in have all kinds of people, but we couldn’t find any plus size model and no albino. So majorly it was dark models.”
At Nyege Nyege Music Festival, Kevyn and I were inspired by Tanzanian artwork around the themes of sexual and reproductive rights and justice. In September, Kevyn told me she wanted to put on a feminist art exhibition. She brought me a proposal the next week to bounce ideas off of. While several people close to me in my life are artists and I do enjoy writing, neither Kevyn or I have experience in curating exhibitions to say the least.
Nonetheless, Kevyn was committed and hit the ground running with artist outreach and venue hunting. I wasn’t able to be of much help while recovering, but did have time to reflect on the opportunities and limitations of activism through art, and to pause on some of the politics and ethics of co-organizing a feminist art show in Kampala. I asked myself:
From whose eyes? In this male-dominated sphere, it was crucial to use various means to find women who may be interested and able to show their work in this exhibition. We envisioned a platform for predominantly Ugandan women to express their own communities’ struggles, knowledges, beauties, and successes, but kept it possible for artists of other genders and nationalities who engage with the theme to be involved.
For whose gaze? I think in circles about how the white, colonial gaze generalizes art as “African” and labels it as “exotic”, eroticizes and fetishizes black women’s bodies, and exploits the labour and ideas of black artists, all while consuming this art for self-serving interests of multiculturalism. This makes the next question pivotal.
For whose benefit? While it is certainly our hope that the artists’ work will sell, it is also a priority that the event is accessible as possible to the communities of the artists, a diversity of women, and allies. Targeting and attracting an audience across spectrums of class and race has proven to be a challenge of its own.
For what result? I’m hesitant to agree with the argument that art has the power to catalyze significant social change. I believe it can provoke thought, questions, critique, and emotions that may lead to shifts in attitudes, values, behaviours, and maybe… over time, systems. However, I’m wary of how we as onlookers sit with political art in shallow moments of appreciation or sympathy, and leave no more engaged or active about the issue than when we came. For me, this is one reason why one of our objectives is to foster dialogue and spark connections that last beyond the exhibition.
By the time mid-November hit, we were knees deep in familiar territory (community organizing, event planning, advertising) and frightening territory (art curation, electrical design, installation planning — serious shout out to one of the artists, Sulaiman Ssenyonga, who has guided us through much of this). Alas, here we are hosting The Woman: Art Exhibition on November 25, The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, featuring eight artists who are passionate about gender justice and Kampala’s top women DJs.
What was the visionary’s motivation for making this dream a reality?
K: “Art communicates more. I feel like I have issues communicating and relating my life to what’s going on... I have things going on in my life and I don’t really talk about them. But art has this comforting thing about it. It’s going to be a networking opportunity for people to meet and relate with one another.”
J: “What do you hope will come of it?”
K: “It happening again and again and again. Bigger and bigger.”
The views expressed in this blog are entirely my own and do not represent the views or opinions of the Aga Khan Foundation, Aga Khan Development Network, or Global Affairs Canada.
