#afrifem

[gutsaruzhinji]

Rona’s goals

COVID has me Coughing up spare Time I’m fast forward And out of it I’m fragile I’m mending

[femafric]

Lady in pink! African Girls unite thanks Mariama Kargbo for making the femafric pink twists look so fab!  www.femafric.com

Hair: Femafric.com

Stylist:: @tutuartistry (IG)

[rosiemotene]

Our safe space! The morning opened with a celebration on how far we have come! In the 8th edition, the room is filled with activists, lawyers, sex workers, consultants, artists and powerful humans. Countries represented Uganda 🇺🇬 🇰🇪Kenya Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 Rwanda 🇷🇼 India 🇮🇳 @amwaafrika #uff2019 #akinamamawaafrika #ugandanfeministyoyneedtoknow #ugandanfeministsyoushouldknow #afrifem https://www.instagram.com/p/B0iF3OOAcor/?igshid=17vq7w848u64d

[widemargin-blog]

Submit to the Wide Margin. Read more on this Call for Submissions here https://thewidemargin.org/submit/

[philisiwem]

@Regrann from @lebusara_ - Our entire existence is protest #woman'sday #women'sday #SouthAfrica #AFRIFEM #africanfeminism #Sisterhood #Lovework - #regrann

[hashtagghana]

@Nanaaba: RT @nas009: Thanks @Nanaaba for citing #Ghanaian women content producers in your talk including @adventurefrom . #Afrifem rules… https://t.co/9XFFVjuOuR

[ourspaceislove]

RADICAL LOVE: for 16 Days of Activism Against Violence Against Women

[holaafrica]

Tiny booklet of awesome from AWDF. #BlackFeminisms #HOLAAfrica #ArtCultureSports #AfriFem #AfricanFeminism

[awidfeministfutures-blog]

Meet Gabrielle LeRoux

I am Gabrielle Le Roux, I was born in London, raised mostly in South Africa under apartheid, left the country at the beginning of the 1980s and lived in a various places including the Canary islands, windward islands in the Caribbean, London and Amsterdam. Returning to South Africa in the early 1990s I worked with a range of feminist NGOs challenging sexism, racism, classism and homophobia. In 2001 I began to see how to integrate my politics and my self-taught passion for drawing portraits from life, and started co-creating projects of portraits and stories around different social justice issues.  I work where I am invited to in collaboration with other activists, I invite the people I draw to write directly onto their portraits whatever they want to say about themselves. The first time I started inviting people to write onto their portraits was actually at the AWID forum of 2008 where I collaborated with Sipho Mthathi to do portraits and stories of the social movement builders present.

I currently live between Cape Town, Johannesburg and Mexico City.  

I don’t have my own website but my work can be found on a number of sites online. Here are some of my key projects:

Proudly African & Transgender portraits and stories: I will be showing this work at AWID and one of my collaborators from this project, Madam Jholerina Brina Timbo, will be attending and co-presenting the work http://www.blacklooks.org/2016/04/proudly-african-trans-activists/

Proudly Trans in Turkey videos and portraits:  will be presented at AWID by two of the project collaborators from Istanbul, Şevval Kılıç and Sema Semih will be sharing this work in different ways: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2512E7325A011C0D

Living Ancestors was my first project of portraits and stories in 2001 in honour of Dominican centenarian women: https://sta.uwi.edu/crgs/september2008/journals/GabrielleLeRoux-LivingAncestors.pdf

AWID: Can you share a brief description of your artistic practice, including: what inspires/motivates you? what do you focus on? why? 

GL: The work is a way to amplify the voices of activists who are already working in an intersectional way with different issues. As a feminist I feel that an understanding that neither sex nor gender is binary is a paradigm shift that needs all our shoulders to the wheel because our ignorance is costing lives, and also because we have so much to learn. It is the contention of my work that we learn from each other through sharing our stories, and that the people who need to be listened to most closely as those who speak from experience.

What inspires and motivates me are all the stories we too often don’t get to hear of lives lived in resistance. The emergence of young black feminist, queer and trans leadership at the forefront of the most exciting movements across the globe gives me hope for feminist futures.

How my work responds is, I hope, as a creative tool that is not the master’s and that can be part of collective efforts to dismantle the master’s house.

AWID: What comes to mind when you think of the term ‘Feminist Futures’?  How does your work respond to this?  

GL: When I think Feminist Futures I think of the black, trans and queer leaders who are emerging at the forefront of struggles from Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall in South Africa to Black Lives Matter in the US and UK. These futures are already in the presents and presence of today. I think of indigenous people’s struggles and the work being done in landless people’s movements and environmental justice activists like Berta Caceres. I think of a struggle which imagines and lives in a more connected way and, by acknowledging the damage of our toxic colonial history, moves towards a future in which everyone gets to be acknowledged as thinkers and as capable of finding the solutions to their own problems. In the feminist futures of my dreams the social inequalities that today yawn ever wider, are a thing of the past and no one has obscenely much or obscenely little. Our leaders in this future are the voices our current system refuses to listen to. 

[gutsaruzhinji]

Morning thoughts 29/04

Currently grappling with moving forward/growing older in a number of areas in my life. I feel like I’m at a gate in my path, and opening it - going through it, will lead me elsewhere. To a home. And I need to have the courage to confront and to embrace what I might find there.

I was asking myself what I want in my relationship. What is commitment?

Friendship

Ourselves in our own names

Prioritising

Integration in each other’s worlds

Sharing clothes

Sharing closets

Sharing jokes

Togethernness

Quality time, quality mutual care

Caring about each other’s feelings

Tending to each other

Joy in our growth and wellbeing

Vision

A plan

[rosiemotene]

Well hello Africa! Woke up feeling totally refreshed and relishing in the beauty of the Nile river!! We started at 6am with and hour of African yoga and meditation. We have a powerful day ahead at the Ugandan Feminist Forum. @amwaafrika @akina_mama_wa_afrika @powa_za #akinamamawaafrika #ugandanfeministyoyneedtoknow #ugandanfeministsyoushouldknow #uff2019 #womenafricaarts #panafricanfemism #afrifem https://www.instagram.com/p/B0hwy_RAQ19/?igshid=ewxufejodef9

[widemargin-blog]

Felicity Okoth discusses ‘Voice Consciousness’ read more https://thewidemargin.org/feminist-voice-consciousness/

[existentialthoughtswithlitha]

Look at the company I keep. On a panel with international writers and the greatest minds. I'm humbled. #MamaIMadeIt #AfriFem (at University of Pretoria)

[ourspaceislove]

RADICAL LOVE: Join the conversation for 16 Days of Activism against violence against women

Run by the amazing African feminists at the GBV Prevention Network