Lady Skollie is a provocateur, and thank heavens for that.
Born Laura Windvogel she has adopted the moniker that very well captures her
public persona and, by a long way, her first ever solo exhibition outside of her
native South Africa called Lust Politics at Tyburn Gallery in London.
Skollie, in South Africa, is a derogatory term for a non-white person which she has
subverted by placing “lady” before it, repurposing the insult as she sees fit.
“Lady” takes the sting away from “Skollie”, and if read the other way, makes less
dull or proprietary, the word “Skollie”. This symbiotic-symbolism applies to the
title-phrase Lust Politics.
The sexual and sensual are by turns celebrated and the assumptions around it
investigated including taboos, consent, gender expectations amongst other
weighty concerns – all done employing crayon, watercolour and ink, hardly the
weapons of mass intellectual destruction and reformation she has turned them
into.
On entering Tyburn Gallery for Lady Skollie’s new exhibition and her first solo
showing in London, the first work one sees, Khoisan Kween Mother (see below,
above?), is the most imposing, hung directly opposite the entrance.Before it and tucked under the staircase that leads from the receptionist desk
and her sneer of a smile is On The Subject Of Consent “don’t worry about it;
around here RED MEANS GO”, on which is a cluster of red apples, some cut in
half.
I ask Ms Skollie if, considering the title, there was strategic thinking in hanging it
close to the entrance, “I guess if you post-rationalize it, yes. The strangest thing
about consent in SA is that it hardly exists; culturally women do not have the
agency to say yes, no or please. We kind of just take what we get regardless of
our input. I mean that sexually, emotionally, intellectually; our consent doesn’t
really matter, so do what you want”.
“Cut-cut, kill-kill, stab-stab” is among other things a critique of Female Genital
Mutilation and seeing it was one of very few instances where a painting spoke
strongly or simply crystallized the problem for me.
My brain wants to believe it is the most “serious” painting here, but that is
probably because the protests against FGM is a current one while the sexuality
explored in other paintings is old and continuous, and that is probably why my
objection to it isn’t as immediate.
I ask Ms Skollie if this is an acceptable reading to which she says “It’s funny that
you immediately thought of FGM; it’s the most literal way that the onslaught on
women takes form. You are right in thinking it is the most ‘serious’ work in the
show”. The eighteen knives all pointing their sharp edges inches close to a
diametrically cut paw paw baring its black core and orange layer is, if not the
most serious, then the least playful.Turns out it is the only work that hasn’t been made specifically for Lust Politics,
but as a commission by South Africa’s Mail and Guardian to write about being a
woman in South Africa, a very broad scope I would think “I woke up that morning
about to create something hopeful, sprightly even and then the first thing I saw in
the news was the murder of 5 year old Kutlwano Garesepe who had tried to fight
off a man who was trying to rape his mother on their daily walk to school. The
image of a little boy fighting a grown man and then being stabbed to death with a
bottle neck and put on the train tracks to add insult to injury summarized the
rape state we are currently in”.
The largest painting on display, Khoisan Kween Mother, is also the newest, started
on Tuesday the 17th of January, completed the next day with visitors to the
exhibition present and unveiled along with the others works on Thursday, when
the exhibition officially opened.
To some, this might come across as showboating, a bid to prove her artistry. But
Ms Skollie courts and embraces public engagement, and appears to have little
qualms explaining her work, something other artists would balk at, for fear of
cheapening or even overselling them, but also to let other find meaning
themselves.
In Ms Skollie’s case, the decision to finish Khoisan Kween Mother before gallery
visitors has an added advantage, “I work well under pressure and I wanted to
bond with the space and leave my own contemporary version of a Khoisan cave
painting but in a U.K context”.This brought to mind Kanye West’s epic one night residency at Madison Square
Garden last year during which he premiered songs from Life of Pablo and also
launch Yeezus 3, the third instalment from his fashion label.
All the models did was stand still for over an hour while Kanye sequenced his new
songs flanked by friends and acolytes.
Listening to new songs for the first time while it’s being played in a packed
stadium won’t encourage deep appreciation of West’s work.
But watching the creator and curator of these two separate and massive projects
in the presence of his creation and curation makes the work immediate, and so
allows even more scope for appreciation, by fans and onlookers, if not for the
final product, then for the effort he has put into it.
Ms Skollie has little to say about Mr West one night extravaganza, but admits
“Kanye is always an inspiration; I threw a temper tantrum when I didn’t win a
competition at the Cape Town art fair in 2016 and everyone called me Kaapstad
Kanye”.
So the creative lift off from West may have all been in my mind, but as if to
strengthen my weak point, I ask Ms Skollie what she made of Gucci Mane’s “Pussy
Print”, which features West to which she says, “everyone knows that I sometimes
sympathize with the objectification of women in rap way too much”.
An honest admission I didn’t expect but should have given how frank Ms Skollie is.
It is an admission with which I and many sympathise. Despite a lifetime of fidelityto hip hop, this objectification still rankles – but not enough to jettison the genre
all together.
On the subject of consent” and “Pussy Prints” in name and meaning (or intended
meaning) is, to me, strongly reminiscent and just as powerful as Chris Ofili’s
“pimping ain’t easy” – an artisanal dick-pick, if I ever saw one.
While at the gallery, “Khoisan Courage” brought to mind Ofili’s The Healer, but
when I dug up his painting I realised the similarities weren’t as strong as I thought
they were.
I doubted if to bring up the comparison not knowing if Ms Skollie will warm to it,
or if they’re just wide off the mark, “Ofili is a huge inspiration, though only in
contexts and concept. And shock value, not particularly visually”.
I wasn’t altogether wrong then. Like Lady Skollie’s work, Chris Ofili’s early
paintings amalgamated the irreverent and the sacrosanct. His later paintings
steered clear of the nakedly confrontational and embraced mythology, the
explicit making way for the implicit.
Ms Skollie is in her late 20s as was Ofili when he courted controversy with works
like Holy Virgin Mary. He also drew inspiration from Zimbabwean cave paintings as
Ms Skollie has done with Khoisan paintings. Such comparisons are not conclusions
on Ms Skollie’s work, rather they’re mere references.
The brain simply creates contexts when presented with new images and ideas
never before encountered. Ms Skollie does not mind the parallels drawn to her
work, “Only when I am compared to dead (or living) white artists. I hate it whenpeople say (and they have) “Oh she’s almost like a South African Tracey Emin” then
I have to be rude and exclaim “Bitch WHERE?!”
“It’s almost as if in SA you only count if you have a vaguely similar white
counterpart. I lamented this fact to Athi Patra Ruga, who I look up to as an Art
Uncle of sorts and he told me that I have to shut comparisons down. That’s the
only way SA Art world shows you respect, by comparing you to a white European
version of yourself ”. On a primitive level, this is the mind creating contexts when
faced with that which is had never seen or fail to comprehend.
***
“When sexual liberation is perceived with a woman in control it is seen as
promiscuous”. (From The Lake interview)
Reading the above statement reminded me of a personal experience. The first
time a girl I fell for was going to spend the night, she brought her own condoms
which were for me. I was both impressed and surprised and then a little worried
that she would carry her own condoms, but they were for me and I had no reason
to believe they weren’t.
I don’t have to think about respecting women because I just do. But even I, in
love as I was and I’d say well raised as I am, a conservatism I didn’t know I had
sprung up. Not that it stopped the business that followed, but it was enough to be
a lasting memory, and a subject that i would bring up in an interview 6/7 years
later.Something similar happened when another lady I was dating asked me not to use
a condom as she was allergic to latex. It was my first time hearing of such an
allergy and then shamefully thought she wanted me to get her pregnant.
Sure enough I went to get tested after the three week wait between act and test,
for any possible symptoms are detected, not wanting to take chances. When I
asked the doctor, who happened to be female, if there was such a thing as latex
allergy, she confirmed it and almost took offence that I would think such a thing
didn’t exist, and that my girlfriend would lie about such a thing for whatever
reasons when she was in fact being sensible.
I think I lost any agency I thought I had being the guy with the condom and in
whose house it was all to take place. It might not even be “agency”, but the
assumption that I had it, and that was shaken by what is a sensible decision on
the girl’s part. Today I’ll give my sisters the same advice.
I had a similar reaction when I visited Tyburn. The works in Lust Politics made me
re-evaluate the latent assumptions and beliefs I had, and the times I may have
bought into my masculinity a little more than I should have.
I’m saying even among seemingly normal and well balanced men, societal
assumptions percolate deeply but not always insidiously. Lust Politics, and by
extension Ms Skollie’s podcasts, zine and views has the power to make one face
and reconsider received thinking.
I tell Ms Skollie of these experiences as responses to Lust Politics and in learning
about her work, and ask if she has observations or reactions to them, not wantingany questions I might have to limit the scope of her answers, and she had this to
say
“This is the perfect reaction to those things; I think the work of me wrestling with
my daddy issues ties in with this because every day, as liberated and free thinking
as I am and sometimes pretend to be; patriarchy also has a psychological effect
on my being every day. It’s the way we are programmed to be, sometimes I’m
confused and I don’t know if it’s biological or taught”
“The girl having her own condoms takes the power away from the man and in
turn annoys the man because what if she’s using those condoms for someone else
too. Possessiveness, jealousy, wanting to be the only one; these things are natural
but we are also told that in the liberated mind they should not play a role. I think
often we are all being mind fucked and we all don’t understand this game”.
In your art and activism, you’re on an epic one woman march to challenge and
enlighten. Do you think the recent Women’s March in Washington and London
in reaction to Trump’s presidency has been effective?
It would have been more effective before he was inaugurated, when Alicia
Machado did her interviews and when all those women came forward. It’s just
another place to prove that women have no importance in this world.
What makes you happy?
Acrylic drawing ink, Batandwa, money.
What was last thing that made you laugh?
Sex.What makes you sad?
Rape, abuse, and feeling like there’s no end to suffering.
What was the last thing that made you cry?
We were trying to catch a mouse that had moved into our old place and after
multiple face to face confrontations, we still could not catch a motherfucker
smaller than my hand. And that really made me question my self worth.
What to you will make Lust Politics a successful exhibition?
If people cry, laugh and then buy.