Reclaiming ownership of African identity.
"I try every single day to have something on me that represents Africa." Makanaka Tuwe shows off her earrings. Photo: Lynda Chanwai-Earle
The first thing asked of Makanaka Tuwe when she's out is, unbelievably, if she can twerk. There's also surprise that she can speak English, questions like 'Are there cars back in your country?' and use of the N-word.
"I think my favourite one has to be, 'So what are you like with your dad?" she says. "It's almost like I come from a single parent home, or me and my dad have a tough relationship. But it's not like that; my dad's one of my best friends."
Makanaka moved to New Zealand from Zimbabwe when she was ten and, like other migrants and former refugee Africans in New Zealand, she is tired of Africans being painted in the media as symbols of perversion, poverty, crime and shame.
As New Zealand's population of Africans increases, so does the desire to create stories that relate to their realities. Makanaka and photographer Julia Glover are behind the project I AM (Studio One, Ponsonby; May 26 to June 16), an exhibition focusing the camera lens on what it means to be African without the mainstream media stereotype.
Listen to the story behind the I AM project:
Makanake Tuwe (left) and Julia Glover (right). Photo: Lynda Chanwai-Earle
Allowing people to open and feel comfortable in front of the lens was a challenge for Julia, who is half Brazilian and half Kiwi."It can be a frightening thing to have a camera right in your face," she says. "[So] it's about capturing them in their environment and really where they want to be."
Initially, the project was going to be called 'Obscurity', to reflect the obscured identities of Africans in New Zealand but both Makanaka and Julia decided to take it in a lighter direction. "Most of the narratives out there in the media about people of African descent are very dark, either you're from a poor migrant background or you're from this whole sexualised black-American culture," says Makanaka.
The end result is an attempt to create a powerful narrative that lets the subjects take ownership of their identity and say, I am this, or I am that.
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More about Makanaka's work can be found here.
The full track at the end of the audio is used with the permission of the artist Raiza Biza and can be found here.