Kweendom: Purple Wigs and Tings

 I like crowns, flowers, glitter, sparkles, bubbles, crochet cat ears and purple hair. In my kweendom these things would be essential. That is all.

Smiles :)

Tuly Maimouna

Tumblr Faces: Upcycled Chokers

Tumblr Faces
Upcycled Choker

Tumblr Faces
Upcycled Necklace

Tumblr Faces
Upcycled Choker

Tumblr Faces
Upcycled Choker

What is a tumblr face? Half face with pouting lips that aim to create a dreamy allure. When I googled chokers online, most of what came up was pics of white-skinned people [resenting as women that capture half their faces while pouting their lips and wearing 90's tattoo chokers. Meh. My luscious, full, afro-black lips (wearing crayola crayon DIY lipstick) are accompanied by these upcycled chokers I've been working on. These chokers are made from the pieces of old necklaces and have been repurposed into new designs! Here's my tumblr face to add to the choker archives!

Smiles,

Tuly Maimouna

'Contemporarily' Historical?

When I was in high school as a part of my a final media project, some peeps and I came together and made a documentary on HIV and black youth in the city of Toronto. Mind you the population of colour in my school was minimal, there were only three authority figures of colour and a scoop of black students. The racial divide was clear, yet the school did nothing to address that. And why should they? Most of us were there due to circumstance trying to attain our french immersion certificate. Bless their hearts, they really tried their hardest to get the darkies out by attempting to convince our parents that French was not our strong suit and we'd get better marks if we dropped out of the program. Dropping out would have led to us ultimately having to leave the school and go to schools closer to where we lived. There is always a clear message and distinction between what people say and what they do. Our school did not provide many opportunities (other than black history month) for youth of colour to address issues that are relevant to them. As I said before in a previous post, black populations are seldom represented beyond traumatic events, and this includes black history month. There is too much focus looking at the past while we ignore the contemporary issues that affect our present. There is a huge disjuncture in creating linkages between historical and contemporary 'blackness', we are contemporarily historical! My problem was and still is that black history month celebrations never seem to be more than a show, in the ones I have attended seldom have I been left thinking about current issues. That is why it was so important to make this documentary around HIV, we wanted to outline how race as a systematic reality in Canada affects vulnerability to HIV and stress why youth involvement in all capacities is beyond necessary.

While that documentary is now a bit dated and I have since graduated high school (and yes of course with my french immersion certificate), recently some friends and I got together to try and address the different aspects of vulnerability to HIV within communities of colour. Taking a more holistic look at what the African, Caribbean and Black (ACB) community looks like, this multi series installment looks at the different challenges and barriers faced by young persons of colour through the different aspects of their identity beyond race. Participants were able to share ideas about what HIV looks like or does not look like, and examine the obstacles faced in those contexts. Through a collaborative effort each individual had their own installment within the larger idea of sex and sexual health. The creative process was entirely up to the group empowering them to explore more personal ideas of self, community and HIV, and to interpret and identify the intersecting points through their own eyes and own lived realities. Check the images below to see a bit of what we did!

While this is not a craft I normally talk about, it is true that different art mediums produce different responses, outcomes and interpretations. The audience is able to place themselves within an image that fairly represents the artist, and it has the ability to facilitate an internal dialogue that informs external ones. This collaborative effort was effective in doing that because each piece of work served to work as a means to reclaim space and increase visibility in a way that each individual wanted to be represented. I believe that the use art mediums has the potential to challenge ideas that place the onus of talking about and understanding race relations on populations of colour while somehow neutralizing white populations in these discussions. Artistic forms cut across all borders and transfer messages we are seldom given the chance to vocalize. If my high school experience taught me anything it was that we have to work together to create platforms where our lived experiences are given meaning and they become building blocks and tools of power for the present and future.

crafts speak volumes!

Smiles :)

Tuly Maimouna

Artducation: Vulvas?

Crochet vulva's

 I have been making these vulva pins for a while and giving them to my friends as gifts, as well as rocking my own. I have been presented with varied reactions from both friends and strangers

"Ew!"

"So F***ING COOL!"
"What is that?"

"Why would you make this?"

Why would i make this...? It is not so much the question that bothers me, but the tone in which the question is asked. There is a lot of disgust and hostility, but ultimately interest. I was recently at a symposium where we spoke about how different vulva's can look and how in text books they are presented as uniform; symmetrical labia, hairless, and cut off from the rest of the body. So that night I came home and looked up diagrams of vulva's. I was baffled (not really) when I tried to look for diagrams that show vulva's that belong to bodies colour and...surprise! I found none! Now you might think, well a vulva is a vulva...right? Yes and no. Sure I've got a vulva and you may have one too, but historically bodies have been presented through race (racialization) and through that, differences have been assumed to justify many historical events that books don't often tell you about. Let us take a few steps back and look at the well known hottentot venus exhibition of Saartjie Baartman, a relative of the Khoikhoi ethnic group born in 1789 in the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa.

In 1735, Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) divided humans into four racially classified subspecies: Homo sapien americancus (Amerindians), europaeus (Europeans), asiaticus (Asians), and afer (Africans) (Hamilton, 2008).  Later, anthropologist Jonathan Marks attributed traits and behaviours to these subspecies, calling the afer “black, impassive, lazy. Hair kinked. Skin Silky. Nose flat. Lips thick. Women with genital flap; breasts large. Crafty, slow, foolish. Anoints himself with grease. Ruled by caprice.” (Hamilton, 2008). Another example of this is the French scientist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) who also based his findings on the taxonomy of Homo sapiens and depicted the afer as “marked by a black complexion, crisped or woolly hair, compressed cranium and a flat nose. The projection of the lower parts of the face, and the thick lips, evidently approximate it to the monkey tribe; the hordes of utter barbarianism.” (Hamilton, 2008). From this established approach to race in academia in the eighteenth century, there is an acknowledgement and acceptance to the validity of the racialization of traits and the hierarchy based off of it. The Hottentot Venus exhibit recreated and brought these ideas throughout Europe, it specifically reinforced and reflected race based on the social hierarchies that existed. The presentation and representation of black bodies in contrast to white ones placed emphasis on differences, and more specifically differences of physical anatomy. The anthropological rhetoric represented the Hottentot as primitive, inferior, secular and uncivilized  and from this made distinct connections between the Hottentot and animals. Labeling black bodies as primitive attributed animal characteristics to them, such as animalistic instincts of reproduction  “…Buffon stated that this animal-like sexual appetite went so far as to lead black women to copulate with apes” (Gilman, 1985). Academic travelers went further as to say that the black woman also show external signs of being primitive, from “Steatopygia a protruding buttocks resulting from the accumulation of fat, and what was then called the “hottentot apron” the elongated labia of the genitalia” (Moudileno, 2009) (see fig.1). 

Saarjtie Baartman’s exhibit relied heavily on the discourse created by academic and scientific elites. These assumptions  presented as fact romanticized ideas about non-white populations, and constructed a false identity that according to Gareth Knapman (2008) pushed non-white populations to a status below that of white Europeans. By labelling these populations as animals, an ideology of inferiority became common thought.

fig 1 the external genitalia of the Hottentot Venus, standing upright

200 years later and this is the only image of the vulva of a woman of colour?! So when someone asks me why I made this I tell them that I am serving to represent my own vulva, sexuality and ultimately myself. And of course I'm gonna make a pin and make sure its all up in your face! Additionally I love making people feel uncomfortable...for a good reason though! I believe that when we are the most uncomfortable is when we are in a space to absorb knowledge and have conversations that we might not otherwise have. We must keep in mind that knowledge and academia are never depoliticized spaces and they entirely selective, meaning there is choice in what is included or excluded given the political and economic climate...think of it like the news, there is always another part of the story we don't hear and we have to be critical and ask why. Knowledge as a form of power is inaccessible for a variety of reasons and it has always been used as a tool of inclusion and exclusion....but that's a whole other conversation!  It's actually hilarious to me when it falls on the ground, and someone will be like "oh, you dropped something!" they go to pick it up for me, but immediately hesitate and retreat once they see what it is. I always say "Ooups, I dropped my vulva!" smile and walk away. Sometimes you have to laugh at other peoples expense, so make things that have a personal statement and challenge normative ideas, it makes your craft that much more meaningful.

Smiles:)

Tuly Maimouna