My name is Dumelang Rosinah Ntlhane.
I identify as a black, female, Christian feminist who aims to bring about conversations on the patriarchal and gender-based and exclusion in my religion and culture. I explore what it means to exist in these communities while confronting problematic norms that are still embedded in them. I ask questions about the reasons and origins behind women wearing wear headwraps and keeping silent in the African churches and cultures I have encountered. I research these topics in my independent practices to enable awareness and a space to talk about them. I conduct this research through scholarly texts, biblical verses and conversations with other people. Throughout this research I am using a traditional head wrap I was gifted to by my grandmother, we wear those during weddings and other cultural events. In various bodies of work this headwrap serves as a physical representation of the patriarchal ideologies imposed on women in these spaces through policing their dressing.
I am asking these questions, I am defying the silence, with my head held high I am not bowing my head in submission.
2022
installation