by “It’s amazing that at my age,” says Hannah Starkey, “and going through menopause, you leave the male gaze behind. And it’s really liberating. You can’t really sell me anything. And I’m dangerous – because I can tell you the truth!”
Traits that emerge in Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and The Art of Protest, a major exhibition at the South London Gallery, organized with the V&A, is a disturbing, dangerous honesty and a fully emancipated female gaze. Crossing continents and generations, this galvanizing group show seeks to combine ideas of image-making and dissent, offering a visual manifesto for the fourth wave of feminism.
When Katayama worked as a jazz singer, a customer once shouted: ‘A woman who doesn’t wear high heels is not a woman’
Starkey, 53, who was born in Belfast, presents three prismatic, large-scale “abstract portraits”. The works are part of a wider series commissioned to mark the 25th anniversary of last year’s Good Friday agreement. The photos pay tribute to a generation of devilish activists, women who were central to the Northern Ireland peace process. The three portraits feature Anne Carr, who was part of the Good Friday agreement team; Bronagh Hinds, co-founder of the Women’s Alliance; and activist, actress and playwright Margaretta Ruth D’Arcy – who ran a women’s pirate radio station from her kitchen in Galway in the 1980s and was jailed in 1981 for painting protest graffiti.
Starkey grew up in Belfast during the 30 years of Troubles. “I saw the power of women and their bravery speaking out,” she says, speaking from her studio in east London. “It was women’s ability to cut through shit. I wanted to remind the younger generation how powerful women can be, with an example of what women have achieved in my own country.” It couldn’t be more timely: Starkey cites research that shows that when women are involved in peace negotiations, they are more likely to succeed and survive.
The portraits were made with simple props and stained glass. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone with a camera,” Starkey explains. After almost thirty years of photographing women exclusively, she knows how critical women can be of their own image. The photographs were staged to make the women visible without subjecting them to scrutiny. They are also deliberately not the bombastic representations we are used to in galleries and museums. “A good image speaks to everyone,” recalls Starkey, whose portraits have a sense of collective power. “It’s about what women can achieve when they come together.”
This mindset matters through the exhibition. Emerging artist activists – such as Nan Goldin, Guerilla Girls, and Zanele Muholi, known for their support of marginalized communities – are joined by younger practitioners, such as Laia Abril, whose work is the result of rigorous research and interviews with women who know them. survivors of abuse and abortion; and Poulomi Basu, who works with women living in rural communities in India.
Among the younger artists on show is Sethembile Mezane, who takes the idea of collaboration a step further, with live performance works. A photograph by Mezane, called Chapungu: The Day Rhodes Fell, is a celebration of the day a statue of Cecil Rhodes was removed from the University of Cape Town. This is what the show is all about, providing a dramatic entry point to the exhibition. In the work, a masked woman dressed in a black leotard, with outstretched arms adorned with elaborate wings, stands majestically on a plinth, standing out from a crowd that raises their phones in the air to capture the moment, while they are at work. the background, a statue is raised by a crane.
This haunting image documents what Msezane calls an “outcry” – a live work that took place when the statue of the former Cape Colony prime minister was removed after months of protests in 2015. Msezane, who appears in the work, was embodied. a bird from Zimbabwe, Chapungu, who she says came to her in a recurring dream.
“The negotiation between me and the bird in my body was very difficult to do,” recalls the artist, speaking by phone from Cape Town. “I was very scared – I wasn’t sure what I was doing or why I was there, or why I felt the need to do this work. But I knew it was the bird working through me, and I didn’t need to have all the answers. As I stepped onto the plinth, my consciousness changed – I was not the person in that image.”
The grueling piece lasted just under four hours. “Getting off the platform,” she said, “I felt very tired, very thirsty, and I was shaking.” In the second image, So Long a Letter, which also appears in Acts of Resistance, Msezane includes a mother holding a crocheted child, made of hair. They stand next to the African Renaissance Monument in Dakar – a 171-foot-tall bronze statue that sits atop a hill above the capital. The statue has sparked controversy since it was installed in 2010. “The woman and the child are being held by the big man,” says Msezane. “But the reality in many African countries is that it is the women who support society, work and feed. The statue is not like that.”
We see Katayama walking confidently down small industrial corridors in her vibrant red high heels
In the huge statue, the child is pointing towards the west. “Are we saying that the future of Africa is in the west?” says Mezane, whose narrative is very different. Her crocheted child joins hands with the child in the statue so that they instead appear to point to the ground. “The future is right here, in Africa,” she explains. “It is us, as young people, who must create a legacy to be proud of.”
Mezane does not call her work feminist: she identifies more with African knowledge systems and with new animation, a spiritual practice that shows a connection between animals, plants and people. “Those are probably the ideologies that feel stronger to me as an African woman practicing and living on the continent.” However, she says: “We don’t live in a vacuum – women’s problems and concerns are similar all over the world.”
Acts of Resistance seeks to decolonize feminism and offer a more pluralist idea of a women-led movement. It also shows the value of photography as a powerful tool of protest – quick and cheap to distribute, accessible anywhere, and able to reach a global audience regardless of the language they speak.
Mari Katayama began taking self-portraits incorporating hand drawn objects she would make as a child. She took the photos to share her elaborate creations on Myspace and Mixi. Katayama finds himself once again in a state of disarray in his small room at home in the countryside of Gunma, Japan. Here, she is working on the largest hand object to date. “I am sometimes told that my work is a fantasy world or a stage made up of my own dream stories.” She sighs. “I’m tired of hearing this. Whenever I talk about feminism, I always think, ‘We have it – rights, equality and freedom – for sure.’ But then when I look at my life, I’m always disappointed that it’s not like that.”
Katayama, who has prosthetic legs, worked as a singer in a jazz bar as a student. One night a customer tackled her and shouted: “A woman who doesn’t wear high heels is not a woman.” While high heels are a polarizing symbol for feminists – the tired debate about oppression or empowerment – high heels were not even a choice for Katayama. So in 2011, Katayama set out on a mission to create a pair of high heels she could perform in – and design the prosthetic joints that would allow her to do so comfortably.
In 2022, her vision was finally realized with Italian luxury shoe designer Sergio Rossi. Two photos show the custom “Mari” shoes. A film, called My Way, was recently shot in another factory – Nabtesco in Japan, where the electronically controlled prosthetic knee joints are designed and manufactured. In the film, we see Katayama strutting confidently down small industrial corridors in her vibrant red high heels.
Acts of Resistance is a turning point in the evolution of feminism: a more inclusive, less western-centric approach that still has plenty of fire in it. Combining these forces to account, the show is a space to observe and highlight the way women continue to be vulnerable and still fight. It is also an opportunity, according to Mezane, “to understand where it is going wrong, and where it would go right”.
• Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminism and the Art of Protest is at the South London Gallery, London, 8 March to 9 June
