Nidān, Volume 2, No. 2, December 2017, pp. 44-60
ISSN 2414-8636
Figure 2
The Two Talking Yonis project was aimed at addressing some of these issues
of racial minoritising, my deliberate decision to invite Ntombela to curate the exhibition was based on the premise that most often our discussions were always argumentative, with particular emphasis on me choosing a position of a South African ‘Indian’ female (at the time of our initial meeting), rather than calling myself a ‘black female’ artist – my ideas and politics have since developed into something more complex. But it is this complication of blackness that I think is important in our current socio-political climate in South Africa and was a constant conversation point during the making of this exhibition.
In this project, rather than positioning Hindu iconography or myself as marginal or inaccessible, my intention was to present this as something that is part of the fabric of this land, which it has occupied for over 150 years. While at the same time being cautious not to fall into the role of stereotyping Indians or ‘Indianness’, or being the stereotype for that matter.
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