A question of identity
Methaetsile Leepile | Sunday October 23, 2022 06:00
I became acutely aware of the complexities when I was in Cape Town, with its racialised environment.
I was often asked, “what are you?” At first I’d say, “I’m coloured”, but the inquisitor would often deprecate with a “no, you are mixed”. In South Africa, this is a racial question.
They would assume that I am a Cape Coloured, but once I opened my mouth they would immediately place me elsewhere. And if I responded with “I am a Motswana”, there was usually that glint of disbelief in their eyes.
I got a sense that the perception of South Africans about their brethren from farther north is that they are a species of a darker hue. In Serowe, the place of my mother’s birth, I got accustomed to being referred to as “lekgoanyana” (white kid) by relatives. Growing up, some people also referred to me as a “lekutwane” (a pejorative term for a mixed race person).
It seems to me that I have a layered identity, and this is something I try to put in context in my work. These are the words of Kim Karabo Makin, a native of Gaborone who is of mixed heritage. She was explaining her art form, which has been on display at Linnaeus Art Gallery, Sanitas Tea Garden for the past month and closes on October 23.
The display, held under the theme, 'The Doors Of Culture Shall Be Opened' is running parallel to another one at the World Bank in Washington DC, which closes on March 23, 2023.
Kim, as Makin is commonly called, is a product of interracial marriage. She was born in Gaborone in 1994. Her father is of British/South African ancestry and a naturalised Motswana and her mother a Motswana by birth. At the time of her birth, the law considered a child born of a marriage between its mother and non-citizen father an alien, so this made her stateless.
Botswana does not accept dual citizenship. Only after the child had turned 21 could they decide on their citizenship. This was before the landmark Dow vs State case of 1991, which challenged the status quo.
Kim studied Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. The subject of her MFA thesis is “transnational identity”. In her treatise, she states that she is concerned with “exploring notions of race and racialisation with reference to my lived experiences through the use of particularly socialised materials”.
She has a preference for mixed media, which in her case includes ceramics, basketry, steel, canvas, cloth (leteise), photography and pantyhose (molenza). As we move around the gallery space, it is the pieces made of the latter material that catches my eye, because of its ubiquity. First there is the trilogy of photographs she calls the ‘Shield’ that make a fashion statement.
She abstracted the Setswana basket form to make a multi-cultural statement about herself. She explains that the basketry material signifies her as a Motswana woman, while the molenza seeks to unpack her identity in Cape Town’s racialised landscape.
I ask her what triggers her interest in the application. “I was interested in using it as a socialised material. It has a gendered identity”, she replies. My eyes gravitate towards two other articles in the gallery, also made of molenza.
The first is a patchy cylindrical piece with octopus-like legs pinned to the wall, which, although aesthetically appealing, looks like it is at the end of its tether after one month on display.
The second, which the artist describes as a ‘radio cabinet’ is made from wood, interwoven with intricate pieces of pantyhose, which are left to flow seamlessly around the wooden object. Both articles, while relatable to her argument, raise questions about the durability and viability of this material in the commercial space.
My favourite piece is the sculpture made from fragments of wood, steel, zinc and ceramics and to which the ‘radio cabinet’ is an appendage. It stands out there gracefully on the wall like a mantel-piece.
Every now and then it makes flashbacks in the form of news and songs describing aspects of the June 14, 1985 raid, the night the South African Defense Force (SADF) commandos killed Thami Mnyele and 11 other anti-apartheid activists, mainly South Africans, in Gaborone. Mnyele was a founding member of the Medu Arts Ensemble, a cultural organisation based in Gaborone between 1977 and 1985.
The organisation sought to promote the use of culture as a tool for fighting Apartheid. It specialised in poetry, theatre, film, music and graphic production. “It’s quite ironic, says Kim, “that I had to learn about Medu and the raids when I was in Cape Town”. The sculpture piece, she adds, is an example of how she applies her ‘art assemblage’ to engage in a dialogue about racialised issues of the past.
“I try to map the inter-connected timelines of individual and collective memory, using photography, sound installation and sculpture”. Kim lives her identity. She views it as some challenge that she has to constantly interrogate through art. Medu has clearly played a big influence in her thinking and art form.
* Artist Kim Karabo Makin is running concurrent exhibitions in Gaborone and Washington DC. She talks to Methaetsile Leepile at the Gaborone display.