Kaia Charles, Bee Diamondhead and Nikki Zakkas discuss the Now Gallery show spotlighting SA creativity
Amapiano has traversed beyond its township roots to garner global attention. Using this aspect of South African pop culture as a departure point, Now Gallery’s exhibition, ‘A Young South Africa: Human Stories’ brings together photographic projects from a group of emerging artists whose works explore the country’s contemporary landscape. Nataal sits down with curator Kaia Charles and two artists featured in the show, Bee Diamondhead and Nikki Zakkas, to discuss what ‘A Young South Africa’ might mean in 2023.
Nataal: Kaia, what was your vision for the show?
Kaia Charles: I used to live in South Africa and coming from the Caribbean, I found it to be such a cultural awakening. Things like the architecture and the political articulation is just so pronounced there, so it was an important and formative part of my creative approach. Amapiano has had a massive influence here in the UK and elsewhere so we wanted to delve into what else is going on creatively. We commissioned young photographers to document what is happening there and we reached out to writers like Nonzi Bogatsu and other academics, who told us about how Ama2000s (South African slang for Gen Zs) are using digital platforms to get their work out.
Nataal: The title of the exhibition is interesting because it has a double meaning.
Kaia Charles: Absolutely. The artists exhibiting are all young creatives, plus it’s now almost 30 years since the end of apartheid and almost 50 years since the Soweto student uprisings. So, we thought it a good time to look at what is happening in in this young nation today.
“This generation is all about their own personal narratives and being confident enough to articulate your struggle” KAIA CHARLES
Nataal: How did you select your exhibiting artists?
Kaia Charles: I keep abreast of creatives who are doing good work. So, for instance Anita Hlazo is a fashion designer who lives in Nyanga, a township in Cape Town, who has collaborated with photographer Ben Moyo on her project/label Afro Grunge. It is contextualised by images that are very personal to her and she talks about the fact she often feels othered because of her goth identity as she challenges traditional stereotypes.
Nataal: What is the importance of the image, or photography as an exhibited medium, in today’s social media-saturated world?
Bee Diamondhead: The power of the image is that it is transportive. I fell in love with photography because it takes you outside a world of your own. For me, as a kid who was an immigrant and who moved around a lot, image-making was how my mind grew and that’s how I could begin to tell the narratives that were in my head. Social media does dilute what we try to put out. We’re stuck in this hamster wheel of trying to keep up. So, it’s great that we have exhibitions like this where we have a chance to create for a different audience.
Kaia Charles: This generation is all about their own personal narratives and being confident enough to articulate your own struggle and I think each artist does that. The show is successful in articulating a sense of place and an identity. An exhibition (in contrast to social media) also allows you the chance to play with the materiality of the work and set design.
Nataal: What’s the thing that gets you excited and wanting to create as a young South African in this moment?
Nikki Zakkas: For me it’s a way to feel connected to the world around me. It’s as if I’m not there anymore. I am capturing things, but I am not in my own head. It’s very therapeutic.
Bee Diamondhead: Before this, I was having a major war with myself and the industry as a whole. My work had become so commercialised. Then I was invited to be part of this exhibition. My friend Muneyi, one of the musicians featured in my works presented here – and who makes the most emotional music – needed an album cover art and I’d had this dream where I saw myself sculpting sand, but as a form of therapy. That was the starting point of the work. It was a chance to play, to have the sand in my hands, engage with my subjects and help them find their vulnerability while rediscovering that thing that made me fall in love with art in the first place.
Nataal: How did you choose the subjects of your works?
Bee Diamondhead: All three of my subjects are musicians and have had some sort of ancestral calling. I have love for amapiano and kwaito and all these incredible genres of music South Africa has created, but I think there is something to be said for our ancestral healers and that music that transports us to a different place. There is something so deeply rooted in who they are in their music, and not what the world tells them they should be. All three of them are queer musicians as well and in a world that tells them not to be, they completely go in and create such beauty. To collaborate with them was a healing for me.
“The most important thing for me now is to continue to do work that feeds my soul and that leaves a different legacy” BEE DIAMONDHEAD
Nataal: How about for you Nikki, as a white South African, how do you place yourself in the conversation?
Nikki Zakkas: I was born in Johannesburg, of Greek heritage. With each of my subjects, we came together and discussed how we were going to approach the project. Together we figured out what place would have meaning for them from a spiritual perspective. They also they chose their wardrobe and make-up. Basically, these are their images.
Bee Diamondhead: And you are like the vessel…
Nikki Zakkas: I suppose so, yah. Each person portrayed is incredible and they have amazing stories. So, for instance we shot a Mamelodi Sundowns female football player at a stadium where they train. I wanted to create something where they could feel that I did right by them, that I honoured them.
Bee Diamondhead: That’s the beauty of photography and image-making: it’s telling someone else’s story. It can be so politicised but it’s nice to be able to get to the essence of it. You are the vessel that gets those stories out there. It’s a very important and powerful role.
Karabo Mooki, Jeanne
Nataal: Do you think you need to be in SA to be able to create these stories?
Bee Diamondhead: Not necessarily. But I have always felt, in order to create for my people, I need to know them. And that is why my work is the way it is, because I have lived these lives. It’s in my bones. I had to go to Mai Mai, a traditional healer market in Joburg, to get specific pigments of the sand that are used for traditional ceremonies and that we then used in the sculpting the subjects. When I lived in the UK, the pull to go home was so strong and the work I created when I returned was worlds apart from what I was creating here.
Nikki Zakkas: For me creating is not place specific, it’s more about responding to my surroundings and the people that I collaborate with. I am from SA and I respond to it differently than I would anywhere else, but my work is about forgetting yourself and looking around you. It’s about forging a connection and being comfortable with the person I am shooting.
Aart Verrips, My Liewe Land
Nataal: So, what’s next for you guys, what do you desire for yourself?
Bee Diamondhead: The most important thing for me now is to continue to do work that doesn’t just pay my bills, but also feeds my soul and that leaves a different legacy. With everything going on in the world and everything we are being fed, I want to find more time to leave the rat-race and create something that makes me truly happy.
Nikki Zakkas: I just want to carry on creating and making a living from this practice which I love so deeply. And I want to keep that spark of inspiration alive. It feels like a precious piece of me to notice things and feel a part of the world, connected to others and connected to the environment. I want to keep that passion.
‘A Young South Africa: Human Stories’ is on view at the Now Gallery in London until 19 November 2023.