Shinyoung's page 04.10

Representation - Alex Mawimbi (2014)

‘Representation’ is a installation artwork done by Kenyan visual artist Alex Mawimbi in 2014. The work is comprised with 12 photographs of her face painted a rainbow flag which represents LGBTQ+ movements globally. The 12 photographs shows Mawimbi rubbing the rainbow flag out from her face gradually which seems to erase the flag and remove boundaries of the each colors. From her personal experience in Kenya where homosexuality is still banned, Mawimbi thought this flag is not as inclusive and representational for herself. Mawimbi found it is difficult to identify with the flag while she was dealing with issues of her own personal safety and security. This piece questions whether an African woman who has same-sex desires is automatically identifiable with the word “lesbian” or with the international LGBT community.

The Ten Murders of Josephine - Rana Hamadeh On the second floor of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, An interesting exhibition ‘The Ten Murders of Josephine has been going on. The Ten Murders of Josephine is an Opera project by artist Rana Hamadeh structured through several evolving iterations. Overall space is quite dark and enigmatic sound from several sounding equipments such as speakers, microphones surrounded a room. A cylindrical installation is a self playing organ. A thick paper which has info of sound passes through the top of the organ, then sound came out from a ceiling speaker. The sound is not make a good harmony and it is so random sounds of piano, voice and so forth. hmmm