Mixedness is my Mythology

Mixedness is my Mythology explores the historical relationship between South Africa and the Netherlands that revolves around the connections and contradictions of migration, ethnicity, colonialism and apartheid. I was born in South Africa in 1993, the official last year of the apartheid era that classified me as Coloured. My grandparents were forcefully removed and my parents chose to raise me in The Netherlands from the age of six. Being born in South Africa and growing up in the Netherlands has created a point of intersectionality in which I bring South African, Dutch, African American and Black American cultural aspects together in images.

My family sits in a grey space where we deconstruct the apartheid construction of ‘colouredness’ and make it our own. Identity is personal and ours is undefined and undetermined as it incorporates multiple backgrounds thus inspiring me to make work with my family. The conscious choice of black-and-white analogue photography refers to the historical anthropological inhumane images of people of colour in South Africa that were used to support ideas on race and legalised oppression. Being neither black nor white, a person of colour is a shade of grey in which everything is possible. In this grey area, I use photography to reclaim and redefine what it means to be a person of colour. This body of work shows a reconciliation and acceptance of our mixed identity. By forging our iconography, we are creating our family’s mythology, thus it is an ode to being Coloured.

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