On at Untitled Studios, 143 Upper Harrington Street, from Thursday, April 5.
JOBURG
Re-membering: Memory, Intimacy, Archive by Sharlene Khan and Jordache A. Ellapen
The work exhibited this week in Braamfontein is taken from the projects of these two artists, When the Moon Waxes Red (2016) and Queering the Archive: Brown Bodies in Ecstasy (2016) respectively. In these projects, through the lens of the “Indian” experience, the two artists explore and unsettle notions of memory, race, class, gender and sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa, and comment on the nuances and complexities of everyday life in this country.
For her series, Khan works with different visual media like video-art, digital photography, and needle-lace to produce “visual textured narratives”, which tell of the difficult circumstances of migratory women.
Ellapen uses archival studio photographs and digital photographs to produce “visual assemblages” that disrupt the heteronormative logics of family, community and nation.
Together, these artists challenge everyday experiences of identities shaped through the tensions of cultural migrations, love of family, loss and mythologies that are often simplistically and sentimentally rendered. These entanglements add richness to South African history .