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Tuesday, September 5, 2017

DRAIN ON OUR DIGNITY




(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