Heat Festival ART: Meet-The-Artists Tour V
Sat Jul 20, 11:00 - Sat Jul 20, 13:00
HEAT HQ at 99 Loop Gallery
ABOUT
HEAT curator Voni Baloyi will introduce and be in conversation with Robert Hamblin (99 Loop), Liam Van der Heever (Ebony/CURATED), Wandie M (at Nel), Toscaneena (at Nel) to the audience before they meet Cheshire Vineyard at the Michaelis Galleries which is staging the Kewpie Salon, a photographic archive of queer life in District Six during the apartheid era, in collaboration with the Kewpie Archives and GALA. This walking tour will include visits to some of the participating galleries that including; ; The AVA, Christopher Moller, Ebony/Curated, Eclectica Contemporary, Kalashnikovv, 99 Loop Gallery, Michaelis Galleries, Nel Gallery, Reservoir Projects, Sisonke Gallery, Under the Aegis, Union House by Spier Arts Trust, Vela Projects and WORLDART.
Robert Hamblin is an artist and gender activist who is concerned with issues of masculinity and transgender activism, looking at tensions of gender and sexuality spectrums. Using primarily painting and photography, Hamblin's body of work and activism collide, with exhibitions like interseXion, which was a collaboration with black transgender sex workers and presents not just gender identity issues, but also issues relating to sex workers' rights. As a proud transgender man, Hamblin has also published an autobiography titled Robert-A Queer and Crooked Memoir and has been nominated for the South African Kanna award at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival.
Liam Van Der Heever creates works which embraces his identity and experience as a person of colour. He explores nostalgia and perseverance through the lens of his personal experiences, using "street games" and other personally significant materials to highlight innovations under oppression during Apartheid. His materials; charcoal, Sunlight soap, and red bricks, as well as culturally relevant motifs (like Chappie's bubblegum and Dominoes), reflect POC life experiences under Apartheid and its lasting effects. Van Der Heever also uses chairs of varying sizes to symbolise generational trauma as a result of segregation. Van Der Heever is an alumnus of the Ruth Prowse School of Art and was featured in the 2024 RNB Latitudes Art Fair.
Wandie M (as she prefers to be known) is a Xhosa photographer and videographer whose memory, experiences, and struggles as an African lesbian are reflected in her work. Informed by her exploration of her identity, Wandie's practice aims to understand her place as a woman and notions of femininity in relation to her culture, particularly regarding her queer identity. Through her art, Wandie finds the courage to confront universal truths whilst delving into deeply personal territory which is often considered taboo in her community. With subtlety, she seeks closure, healing, and self-empowerment, striving for authenticity and affirmation of her being. Wandie's work has been featured in numerous South African Galleries such as Everard Read/CIRCA Cape Town and her film on show, MRRT & Courage was commissioned in 2021 for the pan-African LGBTQIA+ event; Pride Afrique.
Toscaneena is a photographic duo formed by queer couple Tosca Martinus and Neena Borrill in 2019. Their primary focus is on photography, however, they also explore video, mixed media, and sound installation. Typically featuring simplified black-and-white compositions of people and objects, which they use manual in-shot techniques to manipulate, Toscaneena's photographs challenge both commercial photographic norms and themes of psychology and social conditioning. They use their bodies as a canvas, in which their blurred movements reflect the bustle of daily life, emotions, and our harmonization with society, as well as offer an exploration of queer identity. Toscaneena was a finalist for the 2023 Cassirer Welz Award.
Kewpie, a renowned hairdresser and drag queen from Cape Town’s District Six, left behind a photographic legacy of 700 prints which are now housed in GALA’s (Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action) Archive. Spanning from 1950 to the early 80s, Kewpie’s collection provides a glimpse into the queer community of District Six during apartheid South Africa. Captured by Kewpie and her friends, the photographs reveal both members of the community’s performance personas and private moments. Also included are studio portraits and images by street photographers, offering a rich tapestry of life in this era. Captioned by Kewpie herself in 1999, this collection serves as an important and poignant record of a lost community and place, offering viewers a peek into the District Six Queer community’s resilience and spirit. Histories of queer South African lives such as Kewpie show a community that loved and accepted one another and championed their right to express themselves however they wished.
Cheshire Vineyard is an artist, muse, movement and artistic director, performer, and facilitator, known for being a fierce provocateur of deeply sensual embodiment and self-expression. Their work is rooted in the reclamation and de-colonisation of body, mind, spirit and the spaces they occupy through the languages of movement, music, fashion and the holistic integration of their gender abundance. Since 2018, after they first engaged with the Kewpie Collection, Cheshire began working within what felt like ancestral legacy and memory. Since exhibiting the Collection at the SPECTRUM: Salon Kewpie Ball, Cheshire has become an integral part of the Salon Kewpie team.