Cultivating Third Space thinking in ('African') feminism through the works of Nandipha Mntambo. Issue 3 (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Simba, Precious; Davids, Nuraan
• Is Part Of: Agenda. Volume 34:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 87
• Page End: 99
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: subjectivity -- Third Space -- the body -- 'African' feminism -- Nandipha Mntambo; Feminism -- South Africa -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Africa -- Periodicals; Gender mainstreaming -- South Africa -- Periodicals; Gender mainstreaming -- Africa -- Periodicals; Sexism -- South Africa -- Periodicals; Sexism -- Africa -- Periodicals; Electronic journals; 305.4
• DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2020.1790302
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1013-0950

Abstract

Abstract: Nandipha Mntambo's wide corpus of art offers us exciting ways to think through and extend feminist themes. We dwell specifically on Mntambo's cowhide series, which is an ongoing meditation on, and subversion of different conceptions of subjectivity, the body and identity (common themes within feminist epistemologies). Her installations (re)present a mounted artistic contestation of the un-enunciated ways of viewing the ('African') female subject, pointing to non-dualistic revisions of the subject's conceptions. In this way, Mntambo gives materiality to the cultural theorist Homi Bhabha's conceptions of the Third Space, her works usher us into 'the beyond' – a space for contesting archaic dualism, a site of the re-imagined, and a way of (re)theorising the now. In this regard, it is our contention that Mntambo provides us with unexplored avenues to re-think and re-conceptualise some of the central themes of ('African') feminism.