We welcome the new Thami Mnyele Foundation Residency Award winner Kwanele Finch Thusi in Amsterdam! In collaboration with Afrovibes Festival, we have selected Thusi to be in the residency for the months of September to October to prepare for his performances at the Afrovibes Festival.
ARTIST STATEMENT
What I can do is tell a story, a story of my own black contemporary futures – one that has not been demoralised by White Systemic language and Violence. My works seek to re-imagine what it means to be Black and Powerful and Magical and Beautiful and Sacred and Ethereal and Super Transformed abled beings. This Conversation encapsulates my previous works in that it is the virtual expression of PINA (2018/9, a dance work in three parts, and Indabuko, a visual film shot in Kwa Zulu Natal (2014). Both of these works have travelled to Sweden, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Ghana, Mozambique and South Africa over the last 5 years. In this Fellowship, I hope to achieve a more appealing populous language of Black Queer both on virtual and non-virtual platforms – language that is less discriminatory, apologetic, empathic but more universal; utopias in structure and more magical in nature.
Pina (solo & duet) - Afrovibes: Kwanele Finch Thusi
With Pina, South African dancer Kwanele Finch Thusi is building a new mythology of black and queer bodies and identities. In this way he/she opens new frameworks to reduce the image of a society that mainly sees masculinity as strong, powerful and masculine, by confirming and showing the vulnerability and gentleness of the male body. For Kwanele Thusi, his own black queer identity is the starting point for all his work.