Foucault realized, “the present epoch will be above all an epoch of space” (Foucault 1986:22). “We stand here forlornly, your children, lost in a landscape in which we so often feel we no longer belong. A landscape we are bleeding from, generation after generation. You could not safeguard a place for us here. You leave us bereft, unfamiliar with sharing” (Krog, 2003:364).

I began this body of work by documenting no man’s land on the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa. According to the Cambridge University Press (2008) ‘no man’s land’ is defined as “an area or strip of land that no one owns or controls; a land that is unoccupied due to fear or uncertainty.” With a large format camera on a tripod, attached to the railing of Beit Bridge, a series of nine black and white photographs were taken from a bird’s eye position. The photographs were taken from border fence to border fence. This was done over a period of four days (over two seasons: winter and summer) in order to match the lighting and contrast of each image. On the third day I witnessed a Zimbabwean man rossing illegally from Zimbabwe into South Africa with a single bag. My camera was set up on the left tributary of the Limpopo River; I loaded a dark slide and waited for the moment the man would enter the frame. Like the man without an identity who crosses illegally from Zimbabwe to South Africa, I too (because of my queer sexual identity) become illegal if I enter Zimbabwe. A single imagined boundary line in the Limpopo River determined both of our constitutional rights. The imagined line within this space confronted the embodiment of my sexuality and identity. 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), what author Sarah Nuttall (2005: 219) refers to as the “political and gendered myth making to which the land has been subjugated.” The Limpopo was a metaphoric boundary that separated and defined my existence and the existence of the man crossing ‘no man’s land’. As I watched the man, wet with so few belongings and clearly no means for procuring legal identity, I also felt the impact of a socio economic border. I looked down on a man dispossessed as he crossed into a new land, beyond the “the bounds of a police state, into a democracy of economic promise” (Nuttall, 2005: 221). Beit Bridge, as a physical marker, was a liminal site that represented the tension of Zimbabwe on the one side and South Africa on the other. Simmel (1909/1997: 64) sees the bridge as “symbolic of the extension of our volitional sphere over space.” In my case Beit Bridge constituted a threshold of a volitional political space, and as such, became a symbol of a queer and economic border. This visual research led to my concern with the crossing of borders, not only as “national signifiers but as internal markers of potential insight and change” (Nuttall, 2005: 221), a desire to break new imaginative ground of political transformation and identity. South African land has been subjugated to political and gendered myth making which has contributed to the creation of the ‘Other’ through colonial imagined and ideological space.

no man’s land, 2017

bitter water, 2017
giclée print 70×70 cm ed 3 ap II

This has led to various sections of South African society remaining misogynistic, racist, xenophobic and homophobic (Nuttall, 2005: 219). In an essay on xenophobia, Bronwyn Harris (2002: 169­184) reminds us that in 1994 South Africa became a new nation; “this ‘new South Africa’ represents a fundamental shift in the social, political and geographical landscapes of the past.” Segregation has been replaced by unity, “equality has replaced legislated racism and democracy has replaced apartheid, at least in terms of the law” (Harris, 2002: 169­184). Despite the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, prejudice and violence continue to mark contemporary South Africa. This shift in political power has brought about a range of new discriminatory practices and victims. My investigation into borders and imagined barriers highlights the fact that South African land has been subjugated to political and gendered myth making through the historical subjugation of women, the LGBTQI+ community and the ‘Foreigner’, a person who crosses a South African border legally or illegally (Harris, 2002: 169­184). Emergent alongside a new­nation discourse, the ‘Foreigner’ stands as an ideological construct in which racism and violent practice are produced. In terms of my work, I see the ‘Foreigner’ as representative of the ‘Other’; as part of the race, gender, sexuality and class counterargument against patriarchal hegemony.

The exhibition, entitled no man’s land, consists of six photographic collections using large format analogue film, a video piece that was shot on 8/16mm film and a limited edition book. Through engagement with queer theory and my own visual texts, the exhibition explores controlled spaces with a focus on the gendered queer/economic border, the colonial/ideological border, the humanitarian border and the imagined/metaphoric border. The significant purpose of the work is to expose the contours of metronormativity by analysing the historical and ideological control of South African land. 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 “pain­filled 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.” Anzaldua’s text resonates with me as I consider myself to be a marginal person in South Africa in the sense that I grew up in many cultures with a gay sexual identity. no man’s land is an attempt to understand my existential or metaphysical relationship to South African land and space; it is my attempt to become part of its history.

Photographing the Limpopo from Beit Bridge made me consider the colonial control of ideological space, which has had such a direct influence on how people have been classified and imagined. bitter water is a series of photographs of seven South African rivers, as boundaries or borders, photographed over a period of two months in varying weather patterns. The abstraction of water, without any land features or visible marks, is an allegory of a border of historical and ideological imagination. Rivers became easy markers of imagined land division during colonial occupation. The seven rivers stand as boundary symbols and borders of the actualization of imagined and ideological space.

vachauya, uchatovaona achiuya vega. they will come, and you will see them coming by themselves. barrier 7 is a triptych of three large abstracts of razor wire that I encountered walking from the Limpopo River to the South African border fence. The triptych is point of view shot of one of the complex barriers an illegal immigrant would encounter as they walk or swim from Zimbabwe into South African land and space. The lightboxes of the border fence and landscapes are 4×5 inch negatives exposed onto 11×14 inch sheet film creating a positive image. The image with the border army guard was photographed on the Botswana border in a dense forest. The experience of walking in the forests near the Limpopo River made me consider the various natural landscape barriers refugees would encounter. This guided me to a series of dense abstract landscapes which were photographed near the borders of Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique.

vachauya, uchatovaona achiuya vega. they will come, and you will see them coming by themselves. barrier IX, 2017
giclée print 110×140 cm ed 3 ap II

The 4×5 inch (large format film) double exposure of stone steps and a wooden doorway, entitled door, implies a metaphoric barrier, a door that is only opened to a certain few. door is a symbol of imagination that has opened up the study of borders; borders are seen as “both representations or signiers and as ‘a thing or idea itself’, a signified” (van Houtum & Struver, 2002: 141-­142). van Houtum & Struver (2002: 141-­142), in an essay on borders, see the constitutive process of imagining the existence and threat of an ‘Other’ as crucial in the narrating and imagining of borders. It seems justied to neglect, or to be indifferent about, what is beyond the border. The ‘Other’ is imaginatively there, but not present. The constructed border makes visible an imaginative, mental border (van Houtum, 1998; 1999), but therefore “not less real in its effects and consequences.” Hence, the border is “a simulacrum that does not hide the truth or makes reality imaginable, but is ‘the truth’ and represents reality” (van Houtum & Struver, 2002: 142). The closed door is a symbol of “the imagination of strangeness and otherness or social consequences of trespassing it” (van Houtum & Struver, 2002: 142). The door, like the bridge, is a physical manifestation that symbolizes ideological separation. Overcoming borders asks for the imaginative framework that allows people to meet and interact with ‘Others’, with ‘strangers’ (van Houtum & Struver, 2002: 142).

Borderlands, Anzaldúa (1987) tells us, are present whenever different races occupy the same geographical space, whenever two or more cultures edge each other out. The video piece, shot on 8mm and 16mm film, explores the concept of African cultural confrontation in geographical spaces. a place, the title of the video piece, was filmed in Zimbabwe and on the border of Lesotho. The abstract edit deploys the film term ‘magical realism’ to explore the border between culture, ritual, religion and death. The film theorists Cook & Bernink explain magical realism as a genre of narrative fiction that expresses a primarily realistic view of the real world while revealing magical elements (Cook & Bernink, 1999: 322). The central character is the actual Sangoma of Dombashua who was asked to create a form of protection that would guide a person on a complex journey of danger. The protection came in the form of an amulet and natural medicine to wash the body with. journey integrates documentary, African myth and magical realism to tell a story about African journeys, metaphoric border crossing and the border between culture, ritual, religion and death.

The production of boundaries and hierarchies, as well as the classification of people according to different categories, has resulted in cultural imaginaries that separate South Africans (Mbembe, 2003: 26); no man’s land calls for a deconstruction of these imagined boundaries. With political transition, South Africa’s borders have opened up and the country has become integrated into the international community. How South Africa deals with the ‘Foreigner’, or the ‘Other’, is imperative in defining its national and international identity. Ideological constructs ground a social and political order of the imaginary; imaginary entities are perceived and credited as indisputable social reality. The constructed border physically represents an imaginative, mental border (van Houtum, 1998; 1999). As such social reality in different spaces can be changed by imagining it in different ways that are more inclusive, more humanitarian. The humanitarian border emerges once it becomes stablished that border crossing has become, “for thousands of migrants seeking, for a variety of reasons, to access the territories, a matter of life and death” (Bröckling, Krasmann & Lemke. 2011: 138­139). no man’s land asks for the reimagining of borders and the reimagining of outsiders as insiders; the imaginative framework that allows people to meet and interact with ‘Others’, with ‘strangers’, in effect to open the door and cross over the bridge.

door, 2017, giclée print 110×140 cm ed 3 ap II