(Photograph by Masixole Feni)
The KZNSA Gallery is hosting the exhibition
and book launch of Drain on Our Dignity
by Masixole Feni.
Masixole Feni the winner of the Ernest Cole
Award, 2015 for his project – A
Drain on Our Dignity will launched his book and exhibition in August,
2017 at the CAS Gallery, UCT.
An activist photographer who has worked for
GroundUp and Social Justice Coalition documenting social issues around Cape
Town, Feni won the award for focusing his camera on the lack of service
delivery and the life of the marginalised. As he says, “I live at the back of
an RDP house in Mfuleni on the Cape Flats. I experience issues like poor
sanitation, access to clean water and the flooding first hand”.
Sixty years after the anniversary of the
Freedom Charter which campaigned for basic human rights, one person, one vote
as well South Africa’s democracy, many South Africans still find themselves
struggling for basic living conditions. As Feni points out, ”Marginalised
people were neglected by the apartheid regime. Twenty three years into our
democracy, it is a reality that has stayed the same for many.”
Feni’s work echoes the groundbreaking images
produced by Ernest Cole in the early 1960’s showing black life under apartheid.
The book called House of
Bondage, published in exile and immediately banned, reflected on
the lives of the marginalized and the poor and became a universal reference
point for anyone who wanted to know more about the apartheid system.
Feni travelled throughout
the local townships to explore life from this perspective and develop a book
and exhibition. Observing Feni’s work, spatial researcher, architect, Ilze
Wolff, who wrote the introduction to the book notes, “His visualisation of
inequality, structural violence and his own imaginative response through
photography is in itself a reflection on human creativity despite the limits
put forward by power.” For Feni, living in the margins of Cape Town make him
angry. “‘Every day we read about people’s anger and frustration but we don’t
get to see the other side.” But for Feni his work transcends the mere record of
this life to show the resilience of people who make a dignified life under
difficult and unjust conditions.
The book, A Drain on Our
Dignity is published by Jacana Media. The exhibition runs in the Main
and Mezzanine galleries until September 28 at the KZNSA Gallery, 166 Bulwer
Road, Glenwood, in Durban. More information on 031 277 1705, fax 031 201 8051 or
cell 082 220 0368 or visit www.kznsa.co.za
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