Women, for centuries, have been living under societal pressure as doctrines and external agents define their bodies, outside of their own claim. Women have been made strangers to their own body.
In African societies, colonialism reversed the role of women through domestication and containment to achieve its own ends; and religious discourses and entities have played a profound role, justifying the narratives of some cultural practices.
However, now more than ever, women are revealing how their bodies belong to themselves, reclaiming what they feel has been snatched away from them–their bodies.
Realizing that even the most static of human cultures is an engine of inventive mutual influence that can be challenged and has the capacity to change, in recent years, we’ve seen an upsurge of young Africans using their artistic talent to contest cultural practices, creating and documenting their perspective of the African woman’s body.
They do so while negotiating with the past, as they construct a “third” culture; and through this culture, they challenge structural and interpersonal inequalities that affect women, emphasizing on the often-untold stories. While giving insight into the lives and experiences of those who are left voiceless, they confront crucial questions about the systems or structures that shape our relationship to our bodies. Thus, by encouraging dialogue using creative platforms, visual art has become a powerful medium that supports the process in the discussions of present practices informed by the past —narrating, sometimes dramatically, challenging, and reconstructing a suite of narratives and cultural performances.
Keyezua, an Angolan born Berlin based artist, takes us on a visual artwork journey exploring the woman’s body, in a body of work that illustrates sexual expressionism and African culture. Here, her digital collage artwork “depicts fictional women that had their clitoris and external genitalia removed. Keyezua visually explores the ritual of mutilation exploring its affects on body and self. The cruel manipulation of the body is resembled in the portrait collages. Body parts are turned into self-destructive stones, mirroring the lack of feeling or capacity to enjoy sexuality.”
More images here.