BLACK LADIES
Photos of women from the African continent depicted from a book published by Taschen in 2003, titled Black Ladies. Presented under the guise of artistic photos black women are actually shown in soft porn positions. The photo’s show how colonizers still influence the countries that they colonized, and is deeply connected to the development of post-colonial theory. The postcolonial gaze theory allows formerly colonized societies to overcome the socially constructed barriers that often prohibit them from expressing their true cultural, social, economic, and political rights.
Entangled One & Two
Being Black in a predominantly white society felt often unsafe and confusing. It made me doubt my identity and where I belonged. I did not feel completely at home in the Surinamese culture, but also not completely in the Dutch culture. I could only escape my Otherness in my imaginary world. In my inner world I could be who I wanted to be. Within my imaginary world all borders dissolved and my freedom allowed became a reality of possibilities. My body and skin color aren't just as a being. They also a variable boundary, a surface whose (im)penetrability is regulated politically and according to sexual stereotypes. Through the language of the imagination I try to free the inner soul that is trapped in the outer body, which is determined by race, gender and hierarchy. Only then an open space can be created where within the Other can move freely and be without judgement. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas says that only in the encounter with the Other can we experience our existence as justified. Levinas writes the name of the Other with a capital letter, because not every random fellow human being is meant, but among others the stranger. ( De verbeelding van het denken)
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Entangled two
sizes 48cm x 64,5cm mixed media on paper