Panellists:
Sonke Gender Justice
Good Hope Metropolitan Community Church
Gender Dynamix
Athi-Patra Ruga, artist (South Africa)
Sakhisizwe Gcina, Assistant Curator of Special Projects, Curatorial Lab, Zeitz MOCAA
Moderator:
Brian Pellot, Director of Global Strategy at Religion News Service & Religion News Foundation
Zeitz MOCAA hosts an LGBTQI+ forum and press workshop as part of its year-long Curatorial Lab focus on LGBTQI+ rights in South Africa. This forum brings together representatives from civil society organisations that aim to support and advocate for the rights of the LGBTQI+ community across Africa.
The Curatorial Lab at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) is a multi- disciplinary space for experimental curatorial practice and research that explores new curatorial methodologies, subversive curatorial approaches, non-prescriptive practices, and under-represented topics and issues.
The Curatorial Lab’s first project investigates the representation of the LGBTQI+ community in the context of homophobia and the current oppression of gay rights in South Africa. This project strives to promote intercultural understanding of a community who have been excluded from society’s predominantly hetero-normative culture and discourse. The exhibition promotes education through the arts and develops critical thinking about gender and sexuality.
“The exhibition is in line with Zeitz MOCAA’s commitment to intercultural understanding and the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands’s protection of human rights,” says Sakhisizwe Gcina, the AKO Foundation Assistant Curator of Special Projects at the Zeitz MOCAA Curatorial Lab. “Its goal is to establish dialogue and respect for human rights regardless of race, gender, creed or sexual orientation to create a safe environment for the discussion around similarities and differences that create a multi-cultural and diverse society.”
This forum expands on the discussions of representatives from civil society organisations that aim to support and advocate for the rights of the LGBTQI+ community. The discussion will allow the representatives to share their experiences on the grassroots activism for the protection of human rights of queer people living on the continent. How can government and laws be challenged and held accountable for homophobic abuse, violence and social exclusion from the state and its citizens? Within this forum, the group are asked to unpack the contradiction of state law being dismissed and ignored in society through experiences in reality.
This workshop has been organised by Sakhisizwe Gcina, AKO Foundation Assistant Curator of Special Projects at Zeitz MOCAA as part of a yearlong focus on LGBTQI+ rights in South Africa. This LGBTQI+ project at Zeitz MOCAA has been developed in partnership with and generously sponsored by the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, under the banner #cocreateSA.
