Communion
Communion is a project dedicated to remembering and celebrating the lives of marginalised queer people who were murdered for living as themselves. The project is a rejection of the attempts to dismiss, defile or simply erase LGBTQIA+ people. It is rooted in the need to process the emotional impact of the news reports that have been increasingly frequent, but nonetheless very under-reported in mainstream media. Hate crime and the responses to it act to create an environment of fear, as well as the sense that LGBTQIA+ lives are disposable and shameful, yet queer people continue to live openly in defiance of this. The works are meant to celebrate the simultaneously incandescent and ordinary lives that have been lost, while they are a way of mourning, they also are a refusal of the tendency to place the inflicted pain, death and violence at the centre of how we remember them.
The project consists of a series of portraits that evoke a sense of the sacred through references to religious iconography and spaces for contemplation and stillness. There are currently two forms of the project and both are ongoing. The installation consists of a 14 sided metal framework that holds 13 portraits that are hand painted on cast acrylic sheeting and act in a similar way to stained glass windows. The installation can be exhibited both inside and outside, and adapted to the place where it is installed by including different portraits.
There is also an ongoing series of portraits on paper, these are intended to be a more comprehensive archive. The work will soon be gathered onto their own site (queercommunion.co.za). To be updated on when it will be available, subscribe here.
The initial installation at the Spier Light Art Festival included the portraits of the following people, who are no longer with us:
Nonhlanhla Kunene
Sphamandla Khoza
Motshidi Pascalina (Pasca)
Kirvan Fortuin
Sam Mbatha
Buhle Poswa
Lindokuhle Mapu
Nare Mphela
Bonang Gaelae
Lonwabo Jack Phelokhazi
Ndiwana Lindokuhle Cele
Liyabona Mabishi