‘Oh, There Are Politics in Billie’s Work!’: Billie Zangewa and/at the Boundaries of Feminist Visual Activism

P. Raghavan
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Abstract

This article explores the consequences of reading textile artist Billie Zangewa’s art through the frame of feminist visual activism, both in terms of (i) recognizing the political potential of Zangewa’s work, as well as (ii) interrogating the conceptual boundaries of visual activism. Situating Zangewa’s work within a rich legacy of Black and postcolonial feminist investments in self-love and self-care, and in celebrations of domesticity (‘daily feminisms’ in Zangewa’s words), I argue that Zangewa’s art exemplifies the Black feminist practice of reclaiming the terms under which Black women are looked at, redressing histories of erasure as well as hypervisibility underwritten by the abjection, objectification, sexualization and dehumanization of Black women. Attending to Zangawe’s medium, fabric, I also argue against allegations of the individualised, atomized nature of self-love politics, demonstrating how Zangewa’s modality of self-love is deeply embedded in (rather than hostile to recognitions of) universality, solidarity, and the shared, collective experience of Black womanhood. Finally, reading Zangewa’s work through the lens of Lewis’ (2017) frame of presencing and Campt’s theorization of black visuality as refusal, I make the case for re-thinking visual activism as a relational, inter-subjective exercise in sense-making, generating a range of affects and effects that exceed its sites of production and circulation.
“哦,比莉的作品里有政治!”: Billie Zangewa和/在女权主义视觉行动主义的边界
本文通过女权主义视觉行动主义的框架探讨了阅读纺织艺术家Billie Zangewa艺术的后果,包括(i)认识到Zangewa作品的政治潜力,以及(ii)质疑视觉行动主义的概念边界。将赞格瓦的作品置于黑人和后殖民女性主义对自爱和自我照顾的丰富遗产中,以及对家庭生活的庆祝(用赞格瓦的话来说是“日常女性主义”),我认为赞格瓦的艺术体现了黑人女性主义的实践,即重新审视黑人女性所处的条件,纠正被抹掉的历史,以及由黑人女性的自卑、物化、性化和非人性化所支撑的超可见性。关注赞格瓦的媒介,织物,我也反对对自爱政治的个体化,原子化本质的指控,证明赞格瓦的自爱模式如何深深嵌入(而不是敌视)普遍性,团结,以及黑人女性共同的集体经历。最后,通过刘易斯(2017)的在场框架和坎普的黑人视觉性作为拒绝的理论来阅读Zangewa的作品,我提出了将视觉行动主义重新思考为一种关系性的、主体间的意义建构练习,产生一系列超越其生产和流通场所的影响和效果的案例。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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