Bodies of Knowledge

SHOWstudio, Nick Knight and Emma Dabiri present a thought-provoking new body of work featuring over 50 leading international contributors, which seeks to challenge and reconsider how the body has been represented and imagined in visual culture and fashion image-making. Participants working across wide-ranging disciplines including fashion, art, music, film, sports and philosophy, were invited to create short films in response to physical and metaphysical attributes of the human body.

Edited and co-curated by the writer, academic and broadcaster Emma Dabiri, Bodies of Knowledge investigates both inside and outside of the human form to create a constellation of alternative knowledge systems proposed by the contributors.

This bold canon of work ranges from fashion film, 3D animation, video essays and spoken word pieces, to dance and musical performances.

Synopsis:

Drag artist and activist Belinda Qaqamba Ka-Fassie worked with image-maker Lee-Ann Olwage to make a performance film queering the narrative of hegemonic masculinity in the Xhosa culture, challenging the dominant construction of Xhosa masculinities, namely Ulwalukho – the right of passage from boyhood to manhood.