Summer
Show
2022
Show
2022
24
November
18:00 SAST
November
18:00 SAST
Imbokodo Unina
A Rehearsal of Hyperreal Domesticity. Mathenjwa, S. Unit 18. 2021.
Siwelile Mathenjwa
MArch 2021Supervisors:
Unit Leader: Naadira Patel
Unit Leader: Sarah de Villiers
Unit Assistant: Nothando Lunga
UNIT 18︎︎︎
Hyperreal Prototypes: Supersurfaces
This body of work which I present to you is titled…Imbokodo, Unina which translates to Warrior. The removal of word imbokodo outright abandons the African patriarchal lens of a woman’s suffering as a necessary and normalised state, a Martyr but rather inserts the word mother for an unbiased revealing of the nature of Mothering across varying scales. Woman in the above is used as term that already suggest mother. As Erin Boyer and Caitlyn Malone in sexuality and motherhood write: “Motherhood isn’t honoured or praised, but rather it is seen as an obligatory duty the woman must perform, mother and woman is not deemed separate.”
I have deployed the architectural convention of a passage at varying scales as a means to give one access to mothering across the globe, mothering and its shifting notions and demands as exerted on the body and its manifestation on an urban scale. The Passage as a surface I define as a throughfare space, that has allowed for the dislocation of the mother from the child and vice versa, the disembodiment of the mother from her community through transnational legacies.
Creating an architecture of passage as a means of authentic visualisation of mothering and labours of care and servitude as performed by the historical and contemporary working woman who has to provide for her family and is subsequentlyseparated from her kin by distances far and wide. This body of work has chosen to cast its gaze to the women who work and defiantly reside in Warwick Junction, a bridge, a thoroughfare space bustling with trade and commuters. The space is not hospitable, yet they call it home five days a weeks in order to provide for their children back home. I deploy the passage as a gaze and entry point. I construct through tactics of mapping and prototypes that seek to expose the silent predicament of the domestic worker in South Africa. I am readdressing her misrepresentation. The passage as a seemingly overlooked juncture, it is the black woman in servitude in South Africa as a figure portrayed.
I have deployed the architectural convention of a passage at varying scales as a means to give one access to mothering across the globe, mothering and its shifting notions and demands as exerted on the body and its manifestation on an urban scale. The Passage as a surface I define as a throughfare space, that has allowed for the dislocation of the mother from the child and vice versa, the disembodiment of the mother from her community through transnational legacies.
Creating an architecture of passage as a means of authentic visualisation of mothering and labours of care and servitude as performed by the historical and contemporary working woman who has to provide for her family and is subsequentlyseparated from her kin by distances far and wide. This body of work has chosen to cast its gaze to the women who work and defiantly reside in Warwick Junction, a bridge, a thoroughfare space bustling with trade and commuters. The space is not hospitable, yet they call it home five days a weeks in order to provide for their children back home. I deploy the passage as a gaze and entry point. I construct through tactics of mapping and prototypes that seek to expose the silent predicament of the domestic worker in South Africa. I am readdressing her misrepresentation. The passage as a seemingly overlooked juncture, it is the black woman in servitude in South Africa as a figure portrayed.
Keywords:
Mothering, Scale, Act, Invisibility, Passage, Support Systems, Fugitive, Displacement
Mothering, Scale, Act, Invisibility, Passage, Support Systems, Fugitive, Displacement
Contact
Siwelile Mathenjwa:
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