The women of Michael Soi’s work

It is a failure of the imagination that we cannot see the feminism in the wide-eyes and exaggerated secondary sex characteristics of Michael Soi’s women.

This is okay. I know patriarchy is complex and confronting it is confusing. It is 2016 and Kim Kardashian is posting nude selfies alongside womanist statements on her instagram. This is not the angry, prudish misandry that you were told is feminism.

Soi’s work; accessible, brightly coloured pop art takes on East African social hypocrisy with a wry smile. Police officers hold their hands out for bribes, dreadheads bed white women in pursuit of “The Dutch Visa” and everyone places their hands possessively over the breasts and buttocks of the sex workers depicted.

all images courtesy of the Artist’s facebook page

Soi has been accused of misogyny because of the voluptuous women that he loves to paint. Their lips are full, their eyes are wide or hidden behind a fashionable pair of oversized sunglasses, and their bums callipygous. Often their expressions are blank as they twirl around the stripper pole or put their hands down the pants of a mzungu. As a result, the artist’s depictions of African women have been called “problematic”. Of course Soi’s work must be debated and questioned, but I would argue that to accuse Soi of sexism is to fall short in one’s interrogation.

Soi takes on taboo issues; corruption, moral policing by a highly corrupt state, commercial sex work and the commodificiation of interracial romance. Sex workers are women too, women who often come into confrontation with the state as they try to make a living in a deeply patriarchal society. When a prostitute must bribe a police officer with a blowjob to avoid a night in jail while her high society John gets off scot free, will feminism not defend her? When sex workers defend their right to walk around late at night, to wear what they please, aren’t these rights that all women benefit from? Is it not feminist language that allows us to look at Soi’s paintings and discuss women’s objectification, their place in society as the global “sex class”, the difference between seeing and being seen? When we look at the women in Soi’s vivid paintings only as objects of male pleasure (in much the same way as the male characters depicted do) are we not denying them their agency? If you look at the women of Soi’s paintings and do not wonder what they are thinking, what choices brought them to this place, is this a failure of our imaginations, or Michael Soi’s?

Soi’s oeuvre features a range of women from the fully dressed, afro-ed, kitenge-ed, and dignified to the beweave-ed, Monroe pierced and panty-clad. If we come away from an examination of his work talking only about the latter, is this the fault of the artist’s or our own as an audience and society?

Michael Soi’s exhibition “Kampala; The Social Circles” is currently showing at Afri Art Gallery until 31st March 2016. All images courtesy of the Artist’s facebook page

Reclaiming Lady

My current auditory obsession is this remake of Fela Kuti’s 1974 song Lady, by tUnE-yArDs, featuring ?uestlove, Angelique Kidjo and Akua Naru. It is the first single from the second Red Hot compilation, (RED) Hot + Fela, which will raise funds for HIV/AIDS research.

My love for this version is so strong it is almost sexual. Angelique Kidjo is a goddess as always, her lead vocals are full of grunts and gymnastics that call to mind Fela’s energetic stage presence. ?uestlove, the biggest proponent of Fela in mainstream Western music is as ever, the cool backbone of the track. tUnE-yArDs quirky harmonies are just left-of-centre enough to stand on top of the amazing things the brass section, represented by Rubblebucket, are doing. This version manages to inject even more energy into the song, which if you know anything about Fela Kuti and his long musical reign at The Shrine, is quite an achievement. The climax of the vocal harmonies and brass at the end, will make your arm hair stand up and take notice.

Fela’s music was always political, and Merrill Garbus’ (of tUnE-yArDs) choice to populate this song with female vocalists is a political one. The original song was a criticism of what Fela saw of African women’s embrace of Western values.

If you call am woman
African woman no go ‘gree
She go say, she go say, “I be Lady o”

“Intellectual African Scum”

Everyone has been talking about this post, so aptly entitled “You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum”

I love to see African issues talked about and dissected, but it was a disappointment for me to see so many agreeing with the sentiments expressed, and reblogging and retweeting their agreement without discussion, like victims of the nodding disease currently killing kids in Northern Uganda.

And so here, without blemish or edit, is a rebuttal by Ernest Bazanye who is awesome all over the internet. Hopefully it will add something to the current discussion:

Here in bufunze and bullet points is what bugged me about the Lazy Intellectual post.

First the things on the surface of it. Casual assumptions made that seem to bolster his main argument, even though they themselves are disputable.

Like:

Crumbs:

The white man talks about coming in to Africa and taking all the wealth and leaving crumbs.

A rich person coming to your market is a good thing. Yes, when he leaves he will still be rich and you will still be poor, but he leaves his money behind. Would it be better if we kept our minerals and never made any money off them?

Wamma white man come to my country and look at my giraffes and pay me. If somebody thinks you are exploiting me, well, it works both ways.

It was when Africans entered the world of free markets as traders, when we let customers come in to buy and sell, the continent began to register records in economic growth. Foreign investment has been better for Africa than all the protectionism and nationalism and gung-ho Africa pride white elephant industries of the eighties.

Muzungu, muzungu

He mentions a “nincompoop from the New York streets” of whom he says, he “bring him to Lusaka and (Africans will) all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff.” He wants to be told why this is so.

Africans may chant muzungu muzungu for many reasons, among them these two:

One is that children find it entertaining to see a white person. If it was a donkey in shoes they would chant “Punda yenye viatu! punda yenye viatu!” That guy should be offended instead of taking it as a sign of supposed superiority.

The second reason is because when a smart person sees money, he goes to get some. If I have a bucket and I see a rich man with a car, I go and tell him he is very handsome and he has a smart car and he should let me wash it for him at a cost.

Homeless junkie:

If a homeless white drug addict thinks he’s superior to me he can screw himself superiorily. He’s homeless and on drugs. And I’m on a plane.

Barflies:

“Do you know where I found your intellectuals?” he asks. “They were in bars quaffing.”

From the movies I have watched and books I have read, that is kind of what intellectuals do even in the US and Britain. They is always a group of self-obsessed blowhards who congregate around alcohol loving the sounds of their own voices. But it would be a mistake of me to assume that these form the entirety of western intellectual culture. And a mistake to think that the pompous drunks in African bars are the sum of Africa’s intellectual culture.

AIDS cure:

And why should Africa come up with her own AIDS cure? Since when was THAT the way it worked? Did Spain come up with its own cure for Smallpox? Did Japan find its own cure for polio? When someone finds a cure, it’s a cure for everyone. And are you assuming that there are no Africans contributing to the global pool of knowledge that is eventually going to yield a cure?

White Man’s Plane

Also, African passengers are not dependent on white people’s planes. Airline companies are dependent on the money paid for ticket fares. So the plane is the one dependent on the African passenger.

But the main problem with this argument isn’t the examples used to present it, it is the argument itself. The fundamental premise of the thing. He says “In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations.” And then goes to argue that it is because African Intellectuals are lazy.

This is bull. Africans discover and invent and innovate all the time. Farmers create new ways of beating the change of seasons, cooks create new meals, mechanics fabricate makeshift fixes for trucks and matatus, businesspeople make new patterns of distribution, thieves and pickpockets innovate new scams, kisekka market inventors make Japanese imports obsolete at a stroke, … musicians manufacture new styles… It’s just not something as massive and world-shaking as the television or the computer, but then again, when was the last time you heard of a world-shaking technological invention coming out of Romania, or Syria, or Trinidad, or Paraguay, or Andorra?

The major technological leaps of our current global civilization have not been sprouting out of every every single place except Africa. They have actually come from a relatively small part of the global community. Just specific parts of Western Europe. Mostly Britain and America.

The truth is that innovation happens naturally wherever you have societies. And it happens in the same way. Necessity breeds invention. And then invention builds on itself. And so when the computer is invented it will breed computer-based inventions in the societies that have computers and the snowball will grow. The reason you the bulk of internet-based innovation is not taking place in Africa is the same reason it is not taking place in the Emirates. Because the hub is in the US.

And the assumption that there is no internet innovation in Africa is as false as the assumption that there is none in Dubai.

What we forget here is that no matter what the slogans say, Africa is not unique in history. Africans are no different from anyone else. This means that everything that happens in Africa is happening or has happened somewhere else.

Related articles

• In reply to ‘ You lazy (Intellectual) African Scum’ by Takura Shangzha (wacyigelin.wordpress.com)

A bit of adorable for you

From the book I Am Because We Are: African Wisdom In Image and Proverb, by photojournalist Betty Press

Quick Question: If media articles on maternal health in Africa began with a photo like this, would donor funding dry up?

 

 

This is Kampala

“At the heart of the country is Kampala. An urban planner’s nightmare, its fabled seven-hilled pulse spawns a sprawl of arterial slums pumping with people carving out a living. Its pot-holed roads are home to its three million inhabitants: a thrumming hive of informal trade where street vendors flog sunglasses, single cigarettes and Fong Kong clothing, and telecoms shanties scattered along the sidewalks sell sim cards under single neon light bulbs. There are no street lights. It’s left to the swarm of boda-boda motorcycles and matatu mini-bus taxis to light your way.”

Possibly one of the best descriptions of Kampala that I have ever read in this Red Bulletin preview; the bad, the ugly and the beautiful; the frenetic, the kinetic and the chaotic.

The article is on the amazing Breakdance Project Uganda. If you find yourself anywhere near a screening of the documentary Bouncing Cats, drop everything and go and see it, send me a thank you email later. It is fantastic. Featuring Crazy-Legs, K’naan and Mos Def, narrated by Common

Do we need to be called Afropolitan via @Afropopmag

As Anne says: “Our parents [and, in some cases, grandparents] were the pioneers of the global African, most having left their homes to pursue higher education. We are beneficiaries of their struggle to ensure our access to education and opportunity and, as such, I  feel as though we have the obligation to be bolder, more creative, more innovative in how we express ourselves and in how we represent the continent.  I will always consider myself an Afropolitan. It’s not a geographic construct, but a state of mind.”

Occasionally Mnet Soundcheck gets it right

… and introduces me to a dope new artist.

All hail Muthoni The Drummer Queen

From her facebook page bio:

No More Hunger

Khuli Chana featuring JR

Found Objects: Street Art Kampala

We have short memories here. Part of it is self-preservation and desensitization, how else do you explain reading about our money being misappropriated and stolen every single day in the newspaper and feeling nothing?

We have had a long and bloody time in our short history as an independent nation and therefore it is necessary to re-forget every day that our President is a war criminal, that our cabinet is full of thieves. That way we don’t have to consider our own role in creating, nurturing and enabling these leaders we choose every election cycle.

Because there are levels of war criminals and degrees of genocide and there is distance between me and you and Kampala and Gulu and Kigali and Darfur and Port au Prince and the Bronx and time does not heal all wounds but we keep going anyway.

Chimamanda Adichie, who reminds us that when it comes to Africa Many Stories Matter, has a short story collection called The Thing Around Your Neck, my favourite of which is The Headstrong Historian. It tells the story of Nwambga, a widow who protects herself from her in-laws by giving her son to be educated in the ways of white missionaries, and her granddaughter who grows up to write a reclamationist history of Nigeria.  I love this story because how many African stories are blessed with the continuity of both pre and post-colonial history. How many of us know the multigenerational epic that is our own family history?

If the damage that colonialism did to our history can be compared to complete retrograde amnesia , then not only must we go back and relearn our past, we have to keep reminding ourselves of the present. We must force ourselves to see the malnourished kids on Jinja road as if seeing them for the first time. Art has a role to play in making us see and feel the same images again, differently.

Remember this image?

“This house is not for sale”

A few things to love about this video

• “This house is not for sale” #onlyinAfrica
• “The only MC with an MSc”
• The dude at the end with the diastema talking to Naeto C (you can’t hear what he’s saying but it still warms my heart)

Bobby Boulders directs this fantastic, proudly African music video