Interview Billie Zangewa — Galerie Templon
With her first solo exhibition in the parisian Templon gallery, Soldier of Love, Billie Zangewa discusses her therapeutic use silk in her art but also the way everyday life can unite us and how powerful women can be.
Léone Metayer: You say you feel like a « soldier of love », the title of your current exhibition at Galerie Templon. It sounds like a declaration of war… How can love be an act of resistance according to you? And against who or what?
Billie Zangewa: There is a war going on out there. Oppression, racism, sexism, prejudice, exploitation, transgressions of different kinds. It is like humanity has forgotten how to love and those who used to believe have become jaded and skeptical. That is why I feel that I am a soldier fighting for love and not against anything. It is soldiering because of the prevailing believe that universal love is an unachievable ideal, which makes spreading the message a challenge. I also believe that when you truly love yourself, you make loving decisions.
Textile is a sensitive experience, touch is important. As spectators, facing your pieces made with silk, we are tempted to touch! Have you ever thought to offer this (crazy) possibility to the public?
Goodness, no! Can you imagine what it would look like by the end of an exhibition? I do however understand the temptation to experience the work through touch and that is why I moved away from presenting the work in a frame, so that the viewer can interact with the works without any barrier.
When I look at your piece At the End of the Day, exhibited at Templon, I think the empty space could be an echo to a feeling of loneliness, the heaviness of that day… Or perhaps to pieces of the cup broken on the floor! How did this idea to cut textile come to you? Do you have a specific idea of the meanings of those vacant shapes?
I really love to gain insight into how someone else experiences my works, so thank you! Yes, it is speaking to the weight of responsibility, and there is a sense of doing it on my own, hence the loneliness that you’re picking up. It does also speak to an unspoken transgression, or interference, what I like to call my wounds or trauma, as I believe that, to varying degrees, we are all wounded and bear the scars internally. As opposed to feeling ashamed of our wounds, I am suggesting that maybe we should love our pain as much as we love the positive aspects, that there is perfection in the imperfect.
First, those shapes confront spectators to the lack, the frustration of not seeing the whole scene. Then, frustration becomes a feeling of mystery. Those shapes are like marks of a ghost, a spiritual strength coming from the outside…
Yes, it is somehow brutal and haunting, in sharp contrast to the idyllic scenes portrayed. I think it is really how I deal with brutality, quietly. I also think what I am saying is that I might come across as strong but that I’ve had some challenges to overcome and also that I still have daily struggles. This is my mortality, my fragility.
What obstacles did you have to face in the South African art world since the beginning of your practice? And what about Europe and United States? As an African and black women artist, I guess your work has been received differently depending on country.
Initially, when I came to Johannesburg I struggled to find my place as an artist. At the time, my textile work was seen as whimsical craft, rather than art. It was a bitter pill to swallow but I supported myself financially doing different things, all the while working on my visual language and eventually I was seen. Then, when I was fortunate enough to have exposure in Europe, my work was very well received, with an appreciation for the strong female black figure as the center of my narratives. In the US, what I observed was the appreciation of the glimpse into the intimate personal life of a black woman. It was seen as political.
You say that working textile helps you to transform traumas into positive experiences because of silk’s uniqueness, an already transformed material. How is this magic happen? Is it linked to the act of resew, redo, rebuild? Or maybe the magic of slowness of this practice, letting things flourish little by little?
As most of us, I experienced some traumatic events in my childhood that I never dealt with. At the time therapy was not as common as it is today. Even as a child I knew that there were some things that I needed to heal. Watching my mother’s sewing group, I saw how sewing changed their moods and made them more relaxed and peaceful. I think seeing this is what drew me to sewing and to making things. I too was looking for this transformation. Which, as it would turn out, I too found in the act of sewing. With regards to silk, I truly believe that which I was seeking was seeking me. That as someone in search of a personal transformation, I would be led to a medium that is itself a product of transformation.
According to you, representing yourself and the intimacy of your life is a kind of empowerment, as a counterpoint to the male gaze. I think about your great piece Am I Enough? : naked, alone, you seem to ask this question to someone you are looking at, a man maybe… How the male gaze is a strong obstacle to self-care and self-love for girls and women around the world?
I think the male gaze historically objectifies women. And objects have no feelings, they are just things to be owned and used. Unfortunately, the system of patriarchy has reinforced this objectification which has created confusion around self-image for girls and women, but also how men should see and interact with women.
Feminism has deconstructed the notion of “femininity”, considering gender as social construction which keeps human being in restrictive identities. However, femininity is reinventing nowadays! There are lots of ways to be feminine, for a man or a woman. Through your work you seem to contribute to revaluate femininity, encouraging people to be proud of it. What is femininity to you?
Femininity to me is embracing all that I am, not as determined by society and history, but by me. I love the power of my body and the enduring strength of a woman. All the things about women that are considered taboo, I am eager to speak about and bring into the light. If we are not allowed feelings and are just considered some kind of paragons of perfection, basically we do not exist. I embrace all that it means to be a woman; the challenges included, because being a woman is hard. All those who choose to come into this life as women are brave souls indeed!
The domestic sphere is everywhere in your pieces. In our societies, patriarchy is particularly difficult to fight in the domestic sphere because gender inequalities (from household distribution to domestic violence) are hidden from public view. Your scenes help to see home like a space of fight, a source of strength. Fighting to exist is also celebrating a birthday, picking up our child to school, reading, thinking, meditating, learning to swim, telling a story, taking a bath, seeing herself/himself in the mirror… Is this one of your messages? Do you think everyday life is something that link all the people, just like textile is a shared experience?
Yes, everyday life links all of us. These things that we have in common in fact can unite us, if we allow it. In my work, I am basically trying to give a voice, a space to a particular demographic in our society that I consider to be marginalized. By showing the intimate life of a black woman, with her as the central figure of her narratives, I am saying, look, listen, this person exists and she is just like you with all that goes with being a human being. In my work, I am searching for connection that is for the most part lost because of “othering”.
From this perspective, your work makes me think of Mary Cassatt’s paintings. This American impressionist painter created a lot of women portraits at the end of the 19th century: drinking a cup of tea in an armchair, having a wash almost stripped, feeding birds on a bark, picking fruits in a garden… You say that the scenes painted by Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet inspire you. In what way?
Just the matter of fact approach to creating art by painting the things that they saw everyday around them. And how beautiful and poetic and extraordinary they made these everyday things look. I enjoy the simplicity yet depth of it. I see beauty in the mundanities of daily life.
A feeling of serenity emanates from your pieces. In your self-portraits, you often seem strong, confident, calm and brave. I am curious, are you like that in real life or is that a way of being you are trying to attempt?
I am portraying my image in my work so I’m definitely taking creative license and idealizing myself to some degree. To answer the question, I think it is a combination of the two. There is a part of me that is strong and confident and calm and brave, but there is also that part of me that is scared, doubting and vulnerable. I do tend to internalize my feelings and so maybe that is why I seem cool and calm, when I am in fact a very emotional person.
In the next months, your work should be displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris for the exhibition The Power of my hands which gathers several women artists from Africa. Do you think you have power in your hands?
Yes, I do think that I have power in my hands. I have always enjoyed making things and working with my hands. I find a freedom in it and enjoy the creative process. Often it is an opportunity for me to face some difficult emotions and release. The artwork at the end is the reward, a tangible proof of this personal growth experience that I had just been through.
