UBUNTU

"Ubuntu" comes from Southern African languages such as Zulu and Xhosa meaning "I am because we are." An ode to the imperative resilience of ball room, UBUNTU offers a tender insight into a sanctuary for queerness

'UBUNTU'

The word "Ubuntu" comes from Southern African languages such as Zulu and Xhosa meaning "I am because we are."

UBUNTU is a series of intimate portraits illuminating and celebrating some of the extraordinary souls forming the presently thriving South African Ball Room community. An ode to the imperative resilience of ball room, UBUNTU offers a tender insight into a sanctuary for queerness battling a lack of safe(r) spaces.

Across the African continent over 30 countries criminalise same sex-relations. November 30th, 2006, South Africa’s parliament passed the civil union act, making South Africa the first nation in Africa to legalise same sex marriage. South Africa's voguing balls hold space for radical queer euphoria living in a post apartheid shadow. This vibrant ecosystem was born from hostile oppression and forbidden otherness. Revelling in playful, queer resistance where generational pain is transmuted into radical expression. People are connected through the mutual unwavering appreciation, desire and need to celebrate the power of the trans and queer community.

This work is inspired by Kewpie, a pioneer, performer, and gender-fluid icon who became a monument of queer resistance against the South African apartheid regime.

Whilst in South Africa I attended a panel talk hosted by Salon Kewpie as part of the Legacy Project in the heart of District 6. District 6 is a district known for its violent removal of the black and coloured South Africans in 1966 and declared a white’s only area. Over 600,000 residents were forcefully removed from their homes and pushed out into the townships.

Started in 2023, The Legacy Project was created in collaboration between the Salon Kewpie collective, the GALA Queer Archive, and the District Six Museum. The week-long educational programme helps to connect LGBTQIA+ young people in South Africa with their gay, queer, and trans histories. 15 participants from far-flung communities, who are often displaced from urban centres by apartheid policies of segregation, take part in academic and practical workshops.

Ruth Ramsden-Karelse was a member of the Salon Kewpie Legacy Project panel talk. Her PHD work at Oxford University focused on Salon Kewpie and the 600 images that form the District 6 archive imagery. Ramsden-Karelse co-authored with Cheshire Vineyard The GALA Zine which includes essays about the connections between the Kewpie Collection and the contemporary ballroom scene in Cape Town. The essay ‘offers us a rare insight into life under apartheid for a group of people who lived in Cape Town’s District Six, who expressed their genders and sexualities in diverse ways, and who described themselves as gays and girls. It shows us how they resisted and reimagined the constraints that were placed upon them, both by the Nationalist government and by their wider society. It reminds us that another way of life is possible.' These papers have helped anchor this photographic work within something larger than ballroom. The papers highlight the intricacies of how important it is for South Africa’s LBGTQIA+ visibility to reach more people. For there to be representation to ensure there will not be the invisibilisation of entire realities. For the people of District 6’s history to be immortalised. Acknowledging their ancestors who experienced such displacement and violence, who fought for their rights and pioneered queer and trans visibility today. I was deeply inspired by the notion of community that came from District 6, the notion that my child is your child. Where people were looking out for each other, where it was deeper than words.

UBUNTU as a project holds more significance than imagery. It became a visual reminder that memory is about action, mirroring the Salon Kewpie archive imagery.