On Art and Activism

November 12, 2017

Zanele Muholi rolled into town last week with an entourage of twenty artists, filmmakers, photographers, and a drag queen whose nom de guerre is Odi Diva. All are from South Africa, all are LGBTQAI, and all are family to Muholi. Together, they are here for Performa 17, to enlighten and converse with New York art crowds.

Muholi’s calm, totemic self-portraits tackle race, tradition, sexuality, the environment - often in a single image. They are whimsical, however, in their blurred symbolism and peculiar use of objects - those slippery little pieces of culture that are always precious and worthless at once - as well as their poking and prodding at ideas of beauty. Her photographs are on view at Yancey Richardson until December 9th.

office sat down with Muholi and Odi Diva to talk about trash, treasure, and what it means to be a black lesbian South African ‘visual activist.’

Interview by John Martin Tilley
Photos by Zanele Muholi

When we arrived at the Performa space to meet with Zanele, she was running an hour behind - not unusual in New York. When she did arrive, she apologized profusely, and my editor said she understood because she’s known many artists - here, Zanele stopped her.

“I’m not an artist,” she said, “I’m an activist.”

What is the gay scene like in South Africa?

It was at this point that Zanele insisted Odi Diva join us, to answer this question and accompany her in the interview. There was some confusion, as Odi was in the bathroom starting her makeup. She happily sat down with us and chatted in her lovely South African accent.

Odi The gay scene in South Africa is vibrant, vibrant and alive, I’m sure people in the states are not aware of that but it’s actually very much happening. How do we put it? Our legendary club was actually called Angel’s Bronx which was twenty years almost to the year when Naomi Campbell was rejected from the door. She came to do the first Fashion Fall/ for Relief Event for the Nelson Mandella’s Children’s fund and she was removed from the door because, um, well, she looked like a drag queen. She said, “My name is Naomi Campbell and I’ve brought all the top supermodels in the world including Christie Turlington, Amber Veletta… And they turned her away from the door? Odi: They were like, Micheal Jackson is here as well, honey, everybody’s gotta pay. And that was Angel’s Bronx, and that’s where I was discovered while singing karaoke as a boy, I wasn’t yet Odi Diva. It was a big Karaoke night. I think Capetown has one of those really interesting places, we don’t have so much a gay village per se - well we used to have one but it’s been gentrified - but you can be queer in a lot of spaces that are not necessarily queer-orientated.

Zanele When you ask how’s the gay scene in South Africa, it’s so broad. You’re speaking to gay men, surely for your own interest or friend’s interest, etc., when you say “gay scene” you assume feminine gay men equals to metrosexuals equals to the butch leather men etc, etc, which doesn’t connect with my realities, as a black lesbian-identified person. It’s a broad question. Also to limit or narrow your question, would be, how is it like to be, speaking as a media person, as a producer of content - gay scene in South Africa? South Africa is nine major provinces with 50 plus million population with four major races, which is black, white, white minority but white majority in terms of business-owning etc, etc, so a white gay man’s reality is different to a black gay man who doesn’t have a job, in terms of economy or class or the status of the two people. Then there is a black lesbian, who is different to a white lesbian or an Indian lesbian or a colored lesbian. You have four races, no two ways about it, black, white, colored and Indians…. And also to say, “drag scene” - there’s something called ‘homopatriarchy’ - this is it. To say this speaks to male dominance within the queer scene or queer village.

So would you say there’s a separate lesbian scene?

Zanele Of course we are different.

Odi Well when you talk about gay, like a gay clubbing scene, when I thought about it in my head, I didn’t think anything lesbian right now. When people think of a gay capital of Africa, they’re thinking of going into a place where you’re going to see a whole lot of gay men. I guess I think of it as linked, but now that you talk about it it is usually separate.

Zanele It will never be linked even in what is to be seen as progressive New York. We’ve just come from Stonewall, the event happened yesterday, how often do you see lesbians there? There are no black lesbians. So we have learnt to maneuver different spaces and pocketed ourselves just for survival. But when you say New York Pride, who’s at the forefront there? It’s not lesbians, it’s not even black lesbians. It’s mainly white gay men, which isn’t a crime - it’s okay, it’s okay because they are forward. Then you have people like Odi Diva and all those cultural activists who are perceived by the curators of all these scenes as just a drag queen. So in our instance, she becomes not a drag queen but a drag queen with a degree, a well-informed somebody - that scholarship won’t write about because they want to link it to dirty laundry from Africa as if Africa has no creative thinkers. That’s the saddest part of it.

So do you feel like you entered the art world because you didn’t have a sort of space to occupy in the quote unquote “gay scene”?

Zanele Well, no it’s not even about that. For me, I come on board as a visual historian. I’m not collecting the content I’m producing the content, and my attitude being, if you don’t see yourself on tv, create the content. I’m not bothered by what Odi Diva is not doing for me, I’m bothered by what I want to see.

So you’re creating your own platform.

Zanele No, ours. It doesn’t end here (gesturing to herself). It’s then consumed by the scholars who are homophobic pretending to be okay but because they want to get their degrees they use this content anyway, which is on visual activism. So I didn’t see many books on black LGBTIA people and then I had to set the precedent, I produced the content, I’m not a collector of visuals, I produce them. And working alongside experts who are members of my community like Odi Diva, like Tara (another member of the entourage nearby) - beautiful human beings who are asserting different scenes that are never given enough spaces to shine, we don’t have many films that are produced by us [black lesbian women].

There is a lot of content produced on Odi Diva, not by me, not by Odi Diva, but by other people, which is okay because those people are challenging my brain to say “wake up” these are your people anyway, just save some money instead of buying shoes and create this content, produce your documentary, produce your photographs, make sure they are in mainstream spaces like here, so it’s not even like I’m fighting with anyone, I’m just being challenged and therefore it means I have to come on board not as a lesbian, I come on board as a business person, as a person with information, as a person who’s an expert. You know, sharing information with another expert like you, who might know of the gay scene in New York, but not be aware of the information that is not being written about for your own consumption because you deal with gatekeepers who decide what should be seen and what not. So I’m not bothered by it, I’m just on board as a visual historian as a visual activist, not as an artist, who uses photography for articulation to make sure that South African visual history is known and respected, and that the people in my village are respected.

Odi This is one of the funniest things, the story of how I ended up on this trip is sort of informed by what Zanele just said, they just opened up in Capetown the Museum of Contemporary African Art, which is our Guggenheim, which was curated from the collection of Jochen Zeitz who was the chairman of PUMA, who is the driving force behind Jamaica being sponsored by PUMA, the driving force behind, for example, the World Cup, when all the other African Nations wore African colors, so when he came to be open -

When did it open?

Odi September the 13th... It’s the largest contemporary African art museum in the world, [and] the biggest and the first on the continent.

Zanele And also, it has queer content... Whereas in other instances you will find the biggest places they are unfinished, they have many phobias, if not xenophobia, if not afrophobia, lesbophobia, or homophobia, those phobias exist in many of the museums, but that one - it has us in there. I have a room of my own of my own there.

So this is more about your actual photographs, how do you choose the objects that you incorporate in your photographs? How do those - do they just find you?

Zanele Objects are us. All of the objects form us. We are the objects. So like that scarf you’re wearing, it’s apart of you. Are you feeling comfortable right now? And warm right? It’s lovely. I use a lot of materials in my work, but I first think of the black body as as perishable, or the body as meat.

Odi It is perishable, it gets eaten by worms. It’s going to be like any other piece of meat, it’s going to be smoked, and then it’s going to be… foul.

Zanele And then you become a piece of organic food. This is the body. Then I use material that’s harmful to the environment, like plastic, then it speaks to global warming, then it speaks to trash, which is somebody’s treasure, so I use the trash and make it my treasure for some aesthetic of some kind, so for people to say, ‘oh this is beautiful, I don’t believe you used that,’ we see these things every day. These are mundane kinds of materials we commonly use, and then to use it in a photo, and when people say, ‘wow it’s beautiful.’ It’s not about beauty, it’s about the historical element that is attached to it and the politics of the material in spaces and symbolism, etc, etc. In one image I have a fro, like Odi Diva, then Odi D has a song on the politics of hair, and the touchy touchy way people are feeling who do not have our hair texture, they want to fidget, but they’re curious.

Odi My dad would say, we are cutting your hair. You’re shaving it bald because we don’t want you walking around with "k*****" hair.

So, that’s the term that would be similar to 'afro', or...?

Odi So you know the word "n*****", which is not a good word, this is our not-good word. It’s in Afrikaans, so it’s a Dutch derivative.

What constitutes that?

Odi Because it’s kinky.

Zanele Yes, the pencil test.

What’s the pencil test?

Odi Because we have so many cultures mixed in, the “melting pot,” they had to differentiate as to how white you are. So if a pencil could go right through your hair, then you might just qualify to be white. This is what happened in the colored community, it would separate families because some could pass for white and were delivered the privileges, and some couldn’t. That’s pretty universal in terms of the black, African diaspora, the lighter you are the better you are.

It’s like the brown paper bag test in the 30s.

Odi Yes it’s pretty much the same thing. It’s like fairness, like… (sings an African song). The bride is beautiful colored.

Zanele Let me show you the hair we are talking about. These are like horns. This is my hair. This has to do with the dowry, the horns, the wealth. Odi: The cow. In African culture in order to have the child that’s in the woman’s womb you need to adopt her to the family, you pay an adoption fee so the girl can become apart of the family. This is lobola, this is the fee that you pay to show that you can look after this girl. You pay it to the family of the woman you want to marry. It’s a bride price, you see.

So how is that connected to the photograph?

Odi Because before it was the bank notes, it was cows. Hence the reference to horns.

Do they still reference that in marriage ceremonies?

Zanele Of course... But besides even that, these are not just black images. So listen to this, if a girl is not a virgin, it means less cows. If a girl is still a virgin, which means there’s a lot of things going on before like virginity inspection by the family, the father especially gets eleven cows because she’s still good.

And this is current, this currently happens?

Zanele Yes!

Odi The Zulu King, before the reed dance, has to do the check.

So would you say that these traditions inform a lot of your work?

Zanele Of course, these are about history, you know, and who we are. These are not just photographs, this is knowledge shared.

Culture

Mowalola x Miss Sixty Launch with H. Lorenzo

I swing my legs over the ropes that guard the VIP entrance. Always over (I’m 5’10), never under. I’m late to the H. Lorenzo x Mowalola event, and the line is wrapped around the block. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I hate waiting in lines; it just ruins everything.

“Hey, my friend is DJing right now. My name should be down,” I say.

The youngish security guard looks me up and down. I have made an adventurous choice for this type of crowd. Neon pink hoodie, bright orange vest, my Raimundo jeans, and Jeremy Scott animal print sneakers. I let him take me in and look over his shoulder. Hmmm… I will be swathed in darkness when he lets me in. Dark night, dark clothes, dark makeup, furs, hoods, leather accessories, and sunglasses. I don’t recognize anyone, but it’s hard to tell who anyone is because I can’t see after 8 pm without my glasses. Night blindness. I can still catch a vibe though.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Mr. Guard says, interrupting my squinting.

“Who?,” I ask.

“The woman in charge of the list.”

That’s a drag. I want to dance. Lately, I am going out in the name of music.

“So…can I go in?” I ask.

“Just wait for her to get back.”

That sounded fine. I wait. The outdoor smoking area is packed. I imagine the inside to be a mirror of this, hopefully with people dancing instead of blowing smoke in each other’s eyes.

“You got instagram?” The guard asks me after about ten minutes of flirting.

“Can I go in?” I said.

He laughs. He lets me in the event without a wristband.

Inside, I understand why the other guard was gone for so long. I made a mental note to not drink too much liquid, the bathroom line is almost as long as the line outside. The party is popping, far from a flop.

I push through the crowd solo, following the speakers to the DJ booth. The immersive visuals provided me with enough light to make out Mowalola in a gold bikini and her low rise denim. My pulse races like the horse printed on the front of her coochie. That’s the point of the collection, obviously.

My hips swing around before I head towards the open bar. I smile to myself, noting that it’s a mezcal forward menu. I see a drink that disgusts me so I order it without hesitation. It’s a mezcal coffee concoction. My heart ’s ran through already, why not go all in? I head back to dance when I hear Shigecki’s set start. I’m jumping around, sweating, and when I pause for a beat I let out a yelp. There are strippers working poles opposite and behind the DJ booth. Good. Events should be sexy.

I end the night smoking my friend’s Korean strawberry cigarettes taking in the air of cool- when a man comes up to me wild-eyed exclaiming that we look just like one another. I look at him- no, not at all. I turn slowly, remembering what I should be doing: listening to DJ G2G’s set. Back inside, she is playing reggaeton type beats with lasers beaming out of her headphones (I want these). A rave in it of herself.

Too bad all the events end at 2 am in LA.

Culture

Vans Pipe Masters 2024

On the first night, Steve Van Doren and the Vans team hosted the heat draw for the competitors at a casual backyard barbecue. The son of Vans’ co-founder Paul Van Doren, Steve has worked in the family business for decades, and is now known as the Ambassador of Fun. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a cowboy hat made out of old shoes, he was definitely dressed for the part. The surfers, along with family and friends gathered in a relaxed setting as 40 men’s and 20 women’s names were drawn from a shoebox. The competition would run in 3 rounds, the top 4 men and 4 women with the highest scores moving onto the finals. When asked about their strategies, most gave answers along the lines of “get waves.” Refreshingly simple.

After waiting a few days for favorable conditions, the first day of competition kicked off with Women’s Round 1. It was finally time to see Pipeline in action. Banzai Pipeline is known as one of the most dangerous places to surf due to the powerful waves breaking over shallow and sharp reefs. With the potential to crash into the rocky edges or have leashes caught in caves, it takes a ton of skill–-and even more courage–to surf here. No stranger to these risks, the first heat included favorites Caity Simmers and “Queen of Pipeline” Moana Jones Wong, who showed off exactly why they’d been successful here in the past. Midway through the heats, Mother Nature decided to throw in another element as a light drizzle turned into a proper downpour. Rain or shine, the athletes went out unfazed, focused on getting their first points on the board.

After another short day’s break, the competition continued with the women’s second round and the men’s first. The beach was filled with spectators, locals and tourists alike, as the competition was free for all to attend. While fans rooted equally for the women and men, the most popular were the local Hawaiian athletes, which made up about half the competition. The women started off the day again, hyping up the crowd with incredible rides. One ride by Bettylou Sakura Johnson earned the first Bag of Cash of the day– a cash prize (of undisclosed amount) awarded in a brown paper bag to any surfer that pulls off a wow moment, excites the crowd, and pulls off something spectacular regardless of what the conditions might look like.

Winds picked up as the men’s competition began and two strategies quickly emerged: an aggressive approach, targeting any decent waves to build small scores; and a patient approach, waiting for the perfect wave to chase a high single score. Even the waves that were unrideable were a spectacle in itself. The sheer size, illustrated by the length of surfboards riding up and over, and the following crash of white water spray was hypnotizing. Then imagining having to experience it out on the water, duck diving under or being lifted over, brought a renewed respect for the surfers.

After watching these early rounds, it was time for office to head back to the cold. With the competition officially spanning from December 8-20, it seemed the forecast was gearing up for some massive waves— and it didn’t disappoint. Following from afar through Vans’ Instagram and live updates, we saw the full extent of what it means to surf at Pipeline. After a series of electrifying and daring surfs, the 2024 winners were crowned: Erin Brooks and Nathan Florence.

The thrill of watching top athletes compete at the highest level of their sport, even remotely, never fails to inspire. Few sports surrender so completely to the forces of nature as surfing does. And at its core, surfing is all about having a deep respect for the ocean—its unpredictable whims, its immense power, and its ever-changing moods.

Culture

The Cost of Queendom

December 17, 2024

One summer afternoon in New York, a few days after their New York premiere of the acclaimed documentary Queendom, office met up with documentary filmmaker Agniia Galdanova and producer Igor Myakotin at a tattoo parlor on the west side of Manhattan. While Agniia received a tattoo of the portmanteau “DOCU CUNT” across her fists, she — unfazed by the needle on her knuckles — answered our questions alongside Igor about the making of the stirring story that has traveled around the world.

One of the opening scenes of Queendom depicts a ritual many of us are all too familiar with in the 21st century. Jenna Marvin, the documentary film’s central subject, takes her friend along with her to take photos for Instagram. When she finds a suitable backdrop, she poses, poses, poses, and then reviews the photos. Dissatisfied, she gives her notes, and then returns to pose, pose, pose again.

By Brook Aster
Photos by Liv Solomon

The ritual may be familiar, but nothing else about the scene — from its setting to its stakes — is ordinary. The backdrop behind Jenna is a sweeping expanse of ice and snow in a small Russian port town called Magadan. Jenna is dressed in drag, but not drag of the Rupaul’s Drag Race variety; her drag has been referred to as “creature drag.” Her signature white face paint, platform heels and surrealist costumes, with their exaggerated sculptural proportions and use of duct tape and repurposed items, catches the ire of her neighbors and the love of online admirers alike. Jenna eventually accrued a following on social media for her public and technically illegal drag performances, which often involved little more than her walking or being in public spaces but nevertheless were often met with abuse and threats of imprisonment.

But when Agniia first encountered Jenna, she hadn’t yet reached the level of virality that would eventually come in the years to follow. The filmmaker was researching different drag performers in Russia for her sophomore project, which she thought would be a docuseries, when she heard from a friend about a young drag queen from Magadan. “I was like, this is impossible. I have to meet this person,” Agniia remembers. “And I could not actually go meet her because I was in Moscow and she was in Saint Petersburg, so I sent a friend of mine with whom I’d been studying with in film school, and she went and filmed the sample.” The simple video, showing Jenna and her friend getting dressed up for a party, struck something in Agniia. The drag was an earlier, more prototypical version of the style Jenna is now known for; less duct tape and ornamentation, but still that signature striking makeup. “Something sparked. I knew I just had to stick to this feeling,” Agniia says. She decided to turn the docuseries into a documentary solely focused on Jenna.

Around that time, the entire world came to a grinding halt: the onset of COVID-19 pandemic had just led to lockdowns around the globe. With only a couple thousand followers on social media at that point in time, Jenna had tried to branch out and connect with other drag artists in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but faced rejection; her drag was extremely unconventional, and not even other drag artists quite understood it. “I think we found each other at the right moment, because nobody knew what to do, how to cope with all this,” Agniia says. “Jenna was saying that she was lost, and she also didn't know how to develop her art next.”

Unlike some of the other artists Agniia had initially researched, Jenna didn’t need much convincing to allow the camera into her life. “[Especially] after COVID came, there wasn't really [any] drag in my life,” Jenna recounts when I speak to her later over Zoom. “I realized that what drag is for me is not just a costume, a dress, something that you leave, that you take off and then in the dead of the night you put back on. Later, I understood that this is who I am, that I am art and I am drag, and that this is way bigger and more important than just clothing or costume.”

[LEFT TO RIGHT: Agniia Galdanova, Jenna Marvin, Igor Myakotin]

When it came time to move into production stages, Agniia sent a clip to Igor, who had been referred to her by a past colleague. When Igor saw the footage, he was similarly struck by Jenna — and even more struck to find out she shared his small hometown of Magadan. “It was just so fateful to know that I also come from this town, and I've never seen it through this cinematic lens, through the vision that Agniia has,” he says. “I was mesmerized by the footage, mesmerized by Jenna. I thought to myself, I have to do everything I can [for us] to work together, whatever the collaboration is gonna be.”

The two followed Jenna for over three years; Agniia first relocated to St. Petersburg, where Jenna had taken up residence after leaving her grandparents’ home in Magadan, and later Jenna moved in with Agniia in her home in Moscow. All the while, Igor and his team worked remotely from the United States to meet Agniia’s production needs. Inevitably, with all their time spent together, Agniia and Jenna became close.

“There is an unspoken rule in documentary filmmaking that you have to keep this line, and you can’t overcome certain boundaries,” Agniia explains. “In my first film, it was not an easy subject [to do this with] as well. I was following a family for seven months, and [we became] close, but I always was trying to keep my distance, and was constantly thinking about it. How much should I say? How much should I give?” But as she got to know Jenna, it became clear that this time, that distance wouldn’t be possible. “With Jenna almost from the very beginning, I was like, fuck it. That’s not going to work with this one. I'm going to break this rule 100%. I never regretted it, because that's actually what built up the trust that is there.”

As Jenna's public performances continued and began to garner more public attention, her online audience multiplied. Among her virtual admirers was French fashion maven Michèle Lamy, who would eventually sign onto Queendom as an executive producer. Lamy's discovery of Jenna led to an invitation to walk in the Rick Owens show in Paris — her first time modeling, and her first time leaving Russia in her life. Of course, Agniia and her camera followed. But most of their excursions were not so glamorous; many of Jenna's performances shown in the documentary were undertaken at a real risk to her physical safety, and by extension, to the safety of Agniia. But neither of them were daunted.

I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.

After all, Jenna was used to both taking risks and documenting them well before she was the subject of a film; she and her friends long filmed the often impassioned, sometimes violent reactions of strangers and policemen to their mere existence in public spaces in drag. And after a protest performance in which she wrapped herself in the Russian flag, Jenna was kicked out of beauty school, her last attempt at a practical route before pursuing her drag as a full time venture.

The only time Agniia tried to dissuade her was on Paratrooper’s Day, a Russian military holiday often characterized by the drunk soldiers roaming the streets. The risk for violence was especially high. “On Paratroopers Day, people say you can't come out in skinny jeans or with nail polish,” Jenna describes. “[I think] you should do the opposite. You should really make a statement and come out wearing what you want to wear. I think that clothes, what we wear, is really at some point beyond our psyche, our mind, our understanding. It is as if it's a certain kind of spice that is enticing you and you follow the scent of that spice and you don't see anything else except that scent and you follow it. That's how I see it.”

“I was like, ‘girl, maybe we should not do that,’” Agniia says. “Igor was stressing out and she told us, ‘well, you don't need to follow me. I'm gonna go and do it. I don't care if you're coming or not.’” In the end, Jenna ventured out for her performance anyway, protesting the then-recent invasion of Ukraine. Agniia followed. Not shown in the film is that the two were arrested, and managed to talk the police out of their arrest.

Not too long after, she would have to leave Russia again, this time moving for Paris for good; the film follows her struggles to get a visa in time to leave the country after the onset of the war. “It's already been three years that I've been in France, and it is important for me to understand and remember who I am, and to remember that pain, those moments when we were back in Russia doing drag, fighting with the police and law enforcement,” Jenna says. “It is important that this resistance continues and that those voices are not being silenced. Yes, here there’s much more freedom, there are pride parades and queer people can get married, but this is an illusion because there are also places where you cannot get married and you cannot enjoy the same freedoms. I cling to who I am, who I was from the very beginning. I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.”

“Meeting Jenna gave me hope for the future of the country, because governments come and go, people in power come and go, but the generations change at the same time,” Igor says. “So it warms my heart to see that someone like her came from somewhere like that. If I saw her back then at a similar age, it would be even more personal. I think I would’ve accepted myself as gay quicker, and I wouldn't be nervous or closed and not open to the world or myself… Working with this project also meant that we were amplifying the voices of many, many people who couldn't speak like Jenna could.”

For Agniia, the honor of telling Jenna's story is only paralleled by the honor of having her in her life. “We found each other,” Agniia says. “And what I learned from Jenna is so precious; about life, about art, about surviving. And I appreciate it a lot. This film grew so much larger than just a documentary, because I have a family now, a working family.”

Queendom is now available to stream on Apple TV.