Anton Kannemeyer

By: Kenan Petersen

The performance, Anton Kannemeyer, speaks to social anxieties that permeate the physical and psychological spaces of the black body when it is introduced to whiteness.  It proposes that this transition is not a “cookie-cutter” process for every black body, and that not every black body makes it out the same (if they are fortunate enough to break away in the first place).

“The mocking of the black body through historic and contemporary white art is a testament to the view that the black body - according to the white gaze - is given as much respect as a man suffering from insanity, who through lunatic cunning, appears to be human, but is never believed to be so. And thus, is kept as a cheap laugh for those claiming to be sane.”

Performed by: Kenan Petersen; directed by: Mandla ‘Tauyane’ Shonhiwa; project manager: Didintle Ntsie; photographer: Matthew Wareley.