Umthombo 4 - Magazine - Page 9

“My master’s thesis looked at the work
of artists Zanele Muholi and Nicholas
Hlobo and investigated the assumption
that homosexual and transgender
identities are unAfrican.” Both
photographer Zanele Muholi and sculptor
Nicholas Hlobo confront stereotypes of
gender and sexuality in their work.
Makhubu went on to complete a PhD
in art history. “I became interested in the
medium of film and video, so I travelled
to Lagos – home of the Nollywood film
industry. There I explored the ways artists
like Peter Hugo and Zina Saro-Wiwa,
artists working in film and video, are
responding to the Nollywood medium.”
Makhubu also became fascinated
with the many ways that citizenship is
articulated in post-colonial Africa.
“For example, in the wake of the state
broadcaster’s decline in Nigeria in the
late ’90s, the film industry sprang up in
part thanks to investment from
evangelical mega-churches.
“These mega-churches
act as proxies for the state in
some ways. They offer many
of the social services normally
provided by the state –
housing, health care, banking
and childcare – while requiring
members to pay tithes,
analogous to state taxes.”
“Wakanda, as it is presented in the
film, is a fictional kingdom populated
by five tribes brought together by
the mineral wealth of [the fictional]
‘vibranium’. South Africa on the other
hand is settled on gold, diamonds,
platinum, chromium and uranium. And
it is known for its arrogance about its
minerals, judicial system, technologies
“I am fascinated
by … the question of
what it feels like when
you have been so
profoundly displaced
from a place and
yet you identify
with nothing else.”
PHOTOGRAPH: LIBBY YOUNG
On borders
and belonging
During 2014, Makhubu joined
the Michaelis School of Fine
Art at UCT as a lecturer in art
history. Her research interests
have continued to include
themes of citizenship and the
artificiality of the nation state.
When she was asked to
contribute to a roundtable
about the film Black Panther, she chose
the borders of Wakanda as her subject.
“The spatial politics of Wakanda
as a place are very interesting,” she
says. “In the paper, I make an analogy
between Wakandan and South African
exceptionalism.”
and so on, and the assumption that it
will never spiral into the civil war, poverty
or political and socio-economic demise
that other African countries faced in the
1980s.”
Makhubu also considered the film
in relation to other black superheroes,
including those that came before: the
genre of Nigerian comics that combine
elements of African cosmologies and
Afrotopian themes; the South African
film Ikati Elimanyama (isiZulu for “Black
Cat”); and the black township comic
book superhero, Kwezi.
But Black Panther, she says, was the
first such offering from a mainstream
entertainment giant like Marvel to probe
difficult questions pertinent to Africa
and Africans, such as about panAfricanism, black nationalism and the
transatlantic trauma of displacement
through slavery.
Art interventionism
Makhubu is working on a book about
unconventional African art forms and
the role of art interventionism in social
engagement. “By interventionism, I mean
that by doing something unconventional
you are messing with the norm
and going against the grain
in terms of what is considered
decorous and what is thought
of as obscene.
“These are works that are
often informal, disruptive and
temporary, and that focus on
the strong symbolic codes
often used in public and urban
spaces. These are works that
can’t easily be categorised,
sold or archived,” she explains.
“Some examples include
performance art and graffiti
or the art collective that put
a portable toilet into a Cape
Town gallery space.”
Makhubu plans to continue
to explore ideas of belonging
and displacement in her future
research. “I am fascinated
by ideas of ‘uncitizening’ in
Africa and the question of what it feels
like when you have been so profoundly
displaced from a place and yet you
identify with nothing else.
“What does the idea of ‘nation state’
mean at this point in time? And what
does the signifier ‘African’ stand for?”
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