Introduction
Barrier is my latest body of work that follows on from a third-year project at Michaelis in 2017. In this project, I began to see the significance of the imagined line that humans create. In my fourth year, I produced No Man’s Land, images concerned with the crossing of borders as national signifiers and internal markers of potential change. My MFA dissertation LINE considered borders and ecology on the imaginary line of the equator. In 2021, 2022 I worked on Destruction/Renewal which became the second part in Barrier which combines visual texts from 2017 to 2023.
The constructed physical barrier is a metaphor of an imaginative and mental border; a barrier of separation instead of inclusion. The ‘metaphoric border’ was termed by the Latina essayist Gloria Anzaldúa as a way to define “places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them” (Arriola, 2002). The border exists in concrete reality, exists in policy, and most importantly, exists in the human imagination. Our minds have been shaped through our cultures to accept these actual and mental partitions as an indisputable social reality. No Man’s Land, LINE and Barrier call for a deconstruction of these invented boundaries, borders and entities
“Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity: it pours us all into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be a part of a universe in which, as Marx said, “all that is solid melts into air.” (Berman,1988).

roses and daisies, 2022

teagan nepgen, “all that is solid melts into air.” 2022.

cocoon, 2017
Barrier
As a movement, the “queer” aesthetic critically challenges systems of “supremacy, constructed sexual and gender identity, patriarchy and is a counterargument to heteronormativity” (Bronson, 2013: 95). The concept behind the proposed work is to understand the structuring influences on the body that reflect the impact of homophobia, discrimination and violence (Entwistle, 2000).
African land has been subjected to political and gendered myth-making through the legacy of colonialism and the historical subjugation of women, the LGBTQI+ community and the ‘Foreigner’ (Harris, 2002). In post-colonial Africa, some countries remain deeply marked by colonial discourses on sexual morality and decency, which have contributed to
the harassment, victimization and violence of the gendered queer body. Certain African and Middle Eastern countries are diffused with a new politics of religious conservative fundamentalism that emanates primarily from US Pentecostalism and the Wahhabism of the Arabian Peninsula (Gevisser, 2023).
My articulation uses aestheticized visual texts as a counter-argument to gender violence and anti-queer policies in specific patriarchal African and Middle Eastern countries (Gevisser, 2023). The visual and written texts search for a re-imagination and narrative shift of how we as societies consider gender-based violence. Multiple political, cultural and ideological interventions are necessary to inform and dismantle the entrenched mindset of patriarchy and sexism that has been institutionally ingrained since colonialism. Sexual violence is an underfunded public health crisis that endangers the subjugated body on a micro and macro level. Barrier calls for a deconstruction of these invented boundaries, borders and entities, which are perceived and accepted as an indisputable social reality. The constructed physical barrier represents an imaginative, mental border (Van Houtum, 1998; 1999) – and as such, social reality in different spaces can be changed by imagining the queer body in different ways that are more inclusive, humanitarian and empathetic.
Artist Statement
Cultural imaginaries separate society by constructing hierarchies, classifications and boundaries (Mbembe, 2003). A single imagined “barrier” in the Limpopo River determines the legality of my gender identity. In Zimbabwe I might be caught in a “carnal act”, where my actions might be “regarded by a reasonable person” as being a decent or “an indecent act”. Homosexuality is currently punishable by death in four African countries and six countries in the Middle East (Rupar, 2014). In Iraq, the state media regulator recently issued a media ban of the words “homosexuality” and “gender”, requiring them to be replaced with “sexual deviance.”. In 2023, Uganda’’s President Yoweri Museveni signed a bill criminalizing same sex conduct, including the possibility of the death penalty for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality” (Budoo-Scholtz, 2023).
Images by Robert Mappelthorpe circle through my mind as I reflect on these archaic laws and discourses of “decency” and imposed morality – policies that allow for a subjective discrimination that gives these power constructs the right to inflict violence on the (my) queer body. Queer studies of sexuality, space and embodiment explore the “postmodern politics of place in all of its contradictions, and in the process, they expose the contours of metronormativity” (Halberstam, 2005: 15). The photograph and object become counter- arguments, metaphors, allegories, cultural indexes and symbols of the complexities of the queer body in its negotiations of self- protection, vulnerability, identity and agency.
Written and visual texts are vital tools with which the powerless can attempt to communicate and persuade others of various ideas, be they ideological, political, religious or sociocultural (Bull, 2016). Moreover, the visual arts have a dialectical relationship with the history of activism and propaganda through messages spread using the printed text and image (Bull, 2016). There is no actual action I can perform that will change the policies of certain African and Middle Eastern governments concerning queer rights, identity and embodiment, but as a visual communicator I can contribute a counter-dialogue to entrenched patriarchal constructs. Power, once invested in the body, results in “the responding claims and affirmations, those of one’s own body against power …” (Foucault 1977: 56). When my voice is combined with similar artistic voices, a silent dissent reimagines what is considered “normal”.

Reference List:
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Penguin Books.
Bronson, O. 2013. Staging Queer Temporalities: A Look at Miss Gay Western Cape: review article. Berkeley
Undergraduate Journal, 26(2). Available: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7vx702hw#page-1
Budoo-Scholtz, A. 2023. Uganda’s President Signs Repressive Anti-LGBT Law. Available:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/30/ugandas-president-signs-repressive-anti-lgbt-law [2023, May 30].
Butler, J. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. Routledge: New York & London.
Butler, J. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
Gevisser, M. 2023. The Hirschfeld Equation and the Queer Afro-Modern. Available:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12132-023-09491-1
Entwistle, J. 2000. Fashion and the Fleshy Body: Dress as Embodied Practice. Fashion Theory, 4(3): 323-348.
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Psychopathology and Social Prejudice., Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. 169-184.
Van Houtum, H. & Struver, A. 2002. Borders, Strangers, Doors and Bridges. Space and Polity, 6(2): 141-146.
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Bull, K. 2017. Digital Media in Printmaking: Mapping. [Lecture Notes]. University of Cape Town, Michaelis School of Fine Art.
Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected iInterviews and Other Writings. New York: Pantheon Books.
Edwards, C. 1920. A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines From 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. USA: Frederick A. Stokes Company.
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https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/07/a-burning-question.html
Okafor, U. 2016. ‘Corrective’ Rape in South Africa: Targeted Violence Against Women. Huffington Post:
HuffPost Queer Voices. 2009. April 20. Available:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/udoka-okafor/corrective-rape-in-south-africa_b_4292271.html
Mbembe, A. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture 15(1): 11-40.
Library of Congress. n.d. Laws on Homosexuality in African Nations.
Available: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/criminal-laws-on-homosexuality/african-nations-laws.php [2016, March 2].
Rupar, T. 2014. Here Are Ten Countries Where Homosexuality May Be Punished Bby Death. Washington Post, 24 February.
Available: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/02/24/here-are-the-10-countries-where-
homosexuality-may-be-punished-by-death/ [2016, March 2].
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Available: http://www.businessinsider.com/where-its-illegal-to-be-gay-2014-2 [2016, March2].
Title: Roberto
Edition: ⅓ with two Artist Proofs.
Description: Float Mounted Grid. Print by Lauren Smit. Dog Ear Editions.
Medium: Grid is Individually printed on Haneulemeule 308g cotton rag archival paper. Image includes black border of 4×5 inch negatives.
Framing: Framed in light wood with each grid image float mounted. Interior image size 112 x 144 cm.
Concept: The grid is a metaphor of the subjugated body placed in rigid boxes of control. The grid defines and separates the portrait placing it in a structured order alluding to the power of patriarchy.However, the grid can also be seen as my counter argument and deconstruction of these imagined boundaries. The barrier of several 4×5 inch negatives of glass surfaces create a barrier that distances and protects the fragility of the queer body; an imagined and metaphoric boundary that separates and defines my existence and the coping mechanisms I have used in spaces where I was not accepted as the norm. The face becomes a fragment of a true gender identity that conceals itself behind barriers as a form of self protection from the constraints of heteronormativity.

Title: Faggot.
Edition: 7 with two Artist Proofs.
Description: Etching of a bundle of wood. Oil paint on 300g cotton rag archival paper.
Medium: Etching Hard Ground.
Framing: Framed in dark wood – float mounted.
Concept: Jeanne D’Arc stood at stake with fagots piled high for her burning. She was read a sermon and a message was written on a placard which boar these words: “Jeanne, who hath caused herself to be called a maid, aliar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, soothsayer, superstitious, a blasphemer against God. presumptuous, miscreant, boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic and heretic.” (Edwards, 1920: 112).
A faggot was a bundle of twigs, sticks or wood bound together for fuel. In the 16th century the term was used in reference to the burning alive of heretics. The first citation in the OED, dating from around 1555, is by Hugh Latimer, an Anglican bishop. Not until the early 20th century did the word “faggot” come to mean a male homosexual. The OED describes this usage as “slang (orig. and chiefly U.S.).” (O’Conner & Kellerman 2009). The first published reference is from an entry in a 1914 slang dictionary: “Drag, Example: ‘All the fagots (sissies) will be dressed in drag at the ball tonight.’(O’Conner & Kellerman 2009).
Title: Vaseline and Lilies.
Edition: 7 with two Artist Proofs. This diptych will be editioned 1/7.
Description: Diptych. Left panel portrait and right panel flowers.
Medium: Silver Gelatin Hand Prints by Dennis da Silva. 20 x 24 inch 300g Kentmere.
Framing: Framed in dark wood – float mounted.
Concept: The barriers of painted glass surfaces in front of the portrait stand as a metonym of fragility and secrecy. According to the Hirschfeld equation, “the attraction of urban life for queer people is that it offers you a place to hide from those who would hurt you as much as it does a place to reveal yourself to people like yourself” (Hirschfield,2017). The Hirschfeld equation recognizes that most queer activity needs to happen behind closed doors or under cover of night (Hirschfield, 2017).
Arum lilies are an intertextual reference to Robert Mapplethorpe’s early (and later) work deemed ‘indecent’ and ‘obscene’ for their violation of imagined American moral systems.The debate threw the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) into the crisis that is widely referred to as the “culture wars of the arts.” Lilies are at once fraught and fragile signifying elements of absence, erasure, nostalgia and memory. In religious images they depict Christ’s resurrection and the Virgin Mary is often portrayed holding the bloom. Susan Sontag (1973:14) reminds us that “to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or things) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”

Title: Victorian Fence.
Edition: 3 with two Artist Proofs.
Description: Victorian fence post cast in Bronze. L 30cm.
Medium: Bronze
Concept: Victorian Fence symbolizes the imagined/metaphoric border of complex colonial barriers in the form of a Victorian fence post; an architectural identifier of an industrial culture and expansion. For the fence marked the boundary claiming the space within as European and not African. Moreover, colonialism served to introduce puritanical, heteronormative Christian beliefs into African society. The ‘metaphoric border’ was termed by the Latina essayist Gloria Anzaldúa as a way to define “places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them” (Arriola, 2002). Anzaldúa’s (1987) writings in the groundbreaking work Borderlands/La Frontera, share the “pain filled lessons of border crossings based on race, gender, sexuality, and class.” With exceptional insight, Anzaldúa (1987) is concerned with the marginal person: “a person, like herself, who exists in a state of transition, of ambivalence, of conflict; someone who is infused with many cultures yet cannot claim a single one wholly for herself.

Title: Granite.
Edition: 7 with two Artist Proofs.
Description: x2 Etching in Black Granite.
Medium: Black Granite.
Concept: The written texts etched in the black granite are displayed together to reiterate that gay discrimination and hate crimes are still entrenched in our society today by law. The first quote is a
Nazi issued order from Reich Legal Director Hans Frank in 1938. Particular attention should be addressed to homosexuality, which is clearly expressive of a disposition opposed to the normal national community. Homosexual activity means the negation of the community as it must be constituted if the race is not to perish. That is why homosexual behavior, in particular, merits no mercy.
The second engraving is a combined sentence of legal phrases taken from African Penal Codes and Laws on Homosexuality in African Nations from 2016 to 2023. A “scandalous act” of “unnatural carnal knowledge”, “regarded by a reasonable person to be an indecent act”, is a “violation of morality” “against the order of nature”. * Death Penalty: Mauritania, Sudan, Northern Nigeria, Southern Somalia, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates.

Title: Destruction/ Renewal.
Edition: 7 with two Artist Proofs.
Description: Right panel of Triptych on Haneulemeule 308g cotton rag archival paper. 16 x 20 inches.
Framing: Framed in dark wood – float mounted.
Concept: Destruction/ Renewal is a series of colonial maps, dating from 1642 to 1922, that have been ‘metaphorically’ destroyed. The destructive performance was done by photographing the maps on large format negatives, immersing the negatives in an acid bath within a sealed plastic envelope, and slow scanning as the negatives deteriorated to produce the final digital files. Maps served as both instruments and representations of expanding European influence into Africa; an expression of the “territorial imperatives of a particular political system” (Harley, 1988). Far from being natural representations of African humanity and physical geography, “they contributed to Empire building by promoting, assisting and legitimating the projection of European power” (Bassett,1994). Foucault (1980:131) envisioned “cartographic truth as an exercise of power, linked to the will to dominate and control.” Through the iconoclastic action of destroying African colonial maps, I am attempting to deconstruct the cartographic truth that legitimized European political hegemony over foreign and often unknown African territory. From destruction comes renewal.

Title: Rocks
Edition: 7 with two Artist Proofs. This grid will be editioned 1/7.
Description: Bronzed Rocks.
Medium: Bronze.
Concept:The weaponized bronze dipped rocks are a symbolic allegory of laws that allow the stoning of a queer body. There are four countries in Africa (Mauritania, Sudan, Northern Nigeria, Southern Somalia), and six countries in the Middle East (Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) where homosexuality may be punished by death (Rupar, 2014). In Mauritania Article 308 of the Mauritanian Penal Code punishes homosexual acts by Muslim men with death by stoning (“Amnesty International UK” n.d.). In Saudi Arabia, under the country’s interpretation of Sharia law, a married man engaging in sodomy (or any non Muslim who commits sodomy with a Muslim) can be stoned to death (“Amnesty International UK” n.d.).