Sem Sombras (Unshadowed) showcases the work of queer African artists from Angola, Nigeria and Mozambique, across a variety of mediums including performance art, painting, music, poetry and mixed media. The exhibition demonstrates the expansive ways in which queer and gender non-conforming artists express themselves. This exhibition celebrates pan-Africanism and is both curated by and features (gender) queer artists.
It can be easy to slip into the pitfalls of pathologizing queer artistic expression, with a focus on repression, exclusion and hidden desires. Envisioning the works of queer artists often solicits an aesthetic rooted in western understandings of queer being, othering queer people in the global south or viewing them as in need of rescue from their oppressive socio-political landscapes. Sem Sombras (Unshadowed) challenges and interacts with these ideas, while both agitating and motivating attendees toward sustained civic engagement for queer liberation.
Eliana N’Zualo, Cartas de Amor para Meninas Mal Comportadas, 2021, Single channel video, 16 min. Cinematographer Mariano Silva
Eliana N’Zualo’s stunning film Cartas de amor para meninas mal comportadas explores the divinity of women loving women. Filmed at the pristine waterfalls of Naamacha in Mozambique, the video-poem depicts black African women nurturing & uplifting each other and a young child. The film is a luscious view into the lives of queer African women who choose to revere one another in tenderness.
Recognizing that trans/queer liberation is deeply connected to women’s liberation, anti-imperialism and decolonization, this exhibition honours the words of queer ancestor Audre Lourde, who noted that “none of us live single-issue lives.” The ideologies of hate and homogenization that European colonialists brought and maintained in Africa, and across the world, are predicated upon the subjugation of black and dark-skinned people, women & non-men, laborers, practitioners of traditional spirituality and anyone who was not straight or cisgender. With Eurocentric standards alive and well across the continent, the struggle for sovereignty continues. While we advocate for policy change, we also urge a paradigm shift at individual and cultural levels.
Some of the featured artists incorporate spirituality into their works, harkening to a deeply pan-African philosophy of aliveness in all things. African cosmologies often teach that life and wisdom exist in all forms, not only among the plant and animal world. Playing with the liminal space between seen and unseen, these works transport the viewer to a new realm of the artist’s creation.
Mmaapengo Námoda, Mom, I Am No Longer Black: A Ritual, 2021, Performance
Mmmapengo’s ritual Mom, I Am No Longer Black: A Ritual presents us with a spiritual welcoming into the dissolution and reconstruction of one’s identity when faced with metaphysical and physical transition across space. Of the work, Mmapengo writes “A ritual about what has been the deepest one of all my deaths; The one I still feel incomplete of language to talk about it. Then, I have decided to stop forcing a translation. I wouldn’t like to commit the fatality of killing my death. The fact is, I have been drinking water, eating and breathing. I have been staying in the presence of what we have been dying without living. I have been touching the echoes coming from the deep waters: tears, sweat, fears, wounds, desires, pee, menstrual fluids. I have been forgiving, myself, you, and History; I have been forgiving, everything, including God. I am no longer Black. I am back into the blackness”.
To be queer is to be in direct conflict with capitalistic ideals of how bodies, desires and communities should manifest. Queerness stands in opposition to ableism and cisheteropatriarchy, systems with strict mandates under which bodies can look and minds can function. Those who do not conform are exiled, punished, and incarcerated - practices which obscure our continent’s beautiful history of reconciliation as the primary remedy for conflict and harm. Queerness inspires us to think outside of the boring and violent templates of modernity, instead challenging each of us to free ourselves from colonial mentalities and honoring diverse ways of being and relating to each other.
Pamina Sebastião, ACTO DE DES(APARECER), 2022, Photography, 70 x 100 cm
Angolan gender non-conforming artist Pamina Sebastião’s new series Hacking the Cis.theme features photographs of the author exploring the act of de(appearing). This act is a representation of daily violence due to the forced conformity to binary gender categories and the deaths for those who do not fit into them. The work imagines a new existence by surgical or body-altering responses that also, in themselves, feed a capitalist industry. Ultimately, the series is a critique of the system imposed on our bodies according to how they are defined.
Yaki, Sem título, Digital collage 22.5 x 24.7 cm
Similarly, Ana “Yaki” Machava’s painting and photography produces novel interpretations of the human form, often distorted to accentuate the extractive ways in which queer black femmes are treated by a world committed to misogynoir.
Amina Gimba, Trans Afrique, 2021, Digital
Amina Gimba, a Nigerian artist who also lived in Ghana, works largely within digital mediums and murals. Their digital portfolio challenges commonly-held notions of Africa as a primitive land dotted with huts, wild animals and swollen bellied babies. Their work incorporates humor and wit to humanize and normalize queer people in a social and political context of increasing austerity.
Géssica Stagno, Intuição, 2022, mixed media on canvas, 100 x 145 cm
In a colorful invitation towards greater self-knowledge and acceptance, Géssica Stagno abstractly portrays a soul’s journey, once wronged by shame and fear.
Yuck Miranda’s performances are remarkable compositions of dance-theater that evoke discomfort, hurt, belonging and laughter among Mozambicans and audiences in other parts of the world. Currently, the “whore of the arts”, as Yuck prefers to be addressed, is conducting research on her life-long project - Non Identified Identities, centered on narratives of LGBTQ+ people in countries around the world.
To be gender variant, trans and/or queer in Africa is a wonderous feat for those who refuse to live in the shadows. Often told that our way of being is a result of white colonial presence, queer Africans are dismissed as confused or worse. Little self-criticism occurs on the part of those who seek to silence us & fail to recognize the colonial origin of their own homophobia and transphobia. From female husbands to the bori possession cults of pre-Islamic Hausaland; there has always been space and reverence for LGBTQI+ people on the African continent.
Moving beyond a longing for the past, we call now for a complete paradigm shift to envision a future where trans and queer people can define our own existence without repression, fear and violence. We are seeking more than visibility and tolerance, we fight for liberation.
Sem Sombras offers a small glimpse into the immensely diverse and thriving queer art scene in Africa. Instead of aiming to showcase “queer art”, this exhibition provides queer artists a platform to show work on their own terms, challenging stereotypes about what African art and queer art look like. We chose the title to emphasize the reimagining of queerness in this land, beyond visibility, pride and assimilation into capitalistic, western standards of respectability. We want to be seen, but more importantly want simply to be.
