ARTAFRICAINTERVIEW / TANYA POOLETHOZAMA AND ROSE / CHRISTIANE LANGE IN CONVERSATION WITH TANYA POOLE
It’s rare to see violence in women.Exactly. In one of the first paintings I did of a woman fighter, the ink suggested that
she had a black eye. I realised with shock that it was the only image of a woman with a
black eye that I had ever seen that did not infer domestic abuse. This idea of subversion
or the unexpected was enough to pique my interest. The act of fighting is both violent
and intimate at the same time. In the same way, motherhood is another unexpected place
for violence and intimacy. Rose is the mother and Thozama is the mother’s substitute.
Although this practice has a very long history in South Africa, I still find it as shocking
as I initially did when I came to South Africa at the age of ten.The limits of colour, gender and social background seem to be less relevant in a
place like the dojo. It becomes a South African space where borders and structures
are seemingly opened up. Is there a political impact in your work?I see the dojo as a closed bubble that sits in a larger societal structure. It has its own set
of rules and etiquette, which is imported from Okinawa. Even though it has its own
strict hierarchy, the dojo is still a subversion of the outside South African post-apartheid
society. I felt that if I used that as a lens and shifted it to the outside society, then one
would be able to see that its hierarchies are man-made. In terms of political impact,
the manufactured quality of a system first needs to be understood before it can shift or
change.2/3 ARTAFRICATanya Poole, Sophie, 2015, ink on paper, 65 x 50cm.
© The artist.Tanya Poole, Thozama After, 2015, ink on paper,
65 x 50cm. © The artist.