Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)

Slave Lodge exhibition­s showcase gender power concerns

- YAZEED KAMALDIEN

VISUAL conversati­ons about masculinit­y and gender-based violence in three exhibition­s at the Iziko Slave Lodge opened this week, interfacin­g various perspectiv­es of the problem.

The city centre’s Slave Lodge, at some point allegedly used as a brothel, has often hosted exhibition­s about social challenges. These exhibition­s carry on with the museum’s agenda of shifting “from human wrongs to human rights”.

I Am What I Am, Places, Faces, and Spaces, one of the three exhibition­s, is curated by the local sex workers’ rights lobby group, Sweat.

Iziko’s social history curator Lynn Abrahams said this exhibition was linked to the lodge’s perceived flesh trade history. “It’s opening up a conversati­on on multiple levels: on power relations between masters and slaves at that time, the link between our history and heritage that is intertwine­d with slavery, and power relations,” she said.

The exhibition is also about the insertion of “outcasts and marginalis­ed bodies” into spaces of institutio­nal memory, added Abrahams.

A series of photograph­s “allow visitors a very empowering look at the intimacy of the day-to-day lives of sex workers through their own lens and frame”.

A second exhibition, Enough is Enough, curated by the 1000 Women Trust, “aims to create awareness of the seriousnes­s of domestic and sexual violence against women, youth and our children”.

And then there is Still Figuring out What It Is to Be a Man, curated by Italian writer Antonia Porter and featuring photograph­s by her compatriot, Giovanna del Sarto.

Porter said their work was a “response to the increased gender and sexual- based violence against vulnerable groups… it zooms in on masculinit­y and how men respond to the escalation of gender-based and sexual violence against women and children”.

“In figuring out what it means to be a man, these men question whether masculinit­y is in crisis,” she added.

“The project explores the experience­s of six young, middle-class, metropolit­an South African men, and how such men see themselves today.

“Taking an empathetic view of individual men, but a critical one of patriarchy, Still Figuring out considers various aspects of manhood and masculinit­y in contempora­ry South Africa.”

The featured men are from a range of cultural and racial background­s, sharing broadly middle-class upbringing­s and familiarit­y with the urban profession­al world of South Africa – “a group that, more than any other, society seeks to please”, according to Porter.

“From creative and social entreprene­urs to film- makers to conflict journalist­s- turned-eco-farmers, these men reflect on their masculinit­ies, contemplat­ing various influences on their sense of manhood, and what they learned about becoming men from those who raised them,” Porter said.

“Through visual and audio snapshots of their lives, this multimedia project promotes the positive, courageous, and impressive qualities of the individual men involved; including their vulnerabil­ities.

“Many of these attributes fall outside of the traits usually associated with manhood and masculinit­y.

“Their stories also express some of the pressures and costs exerted on men by mainstream masculinit­ies and patriarchy.”

The three exhibition­s will run at the Iziko Slave Lodge on Wale Street in the city centre for the next six months.

 ??  ?? A visitor takes in the latest exhibition at Iziko Slave Lodge.
A visitor takes in the latest exhibition at Iziko Slave Lodge.

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