Ongea, meaning ‘talk’ in Swahili, is a project that aims to amplify voices and highlight the historical and social significance of the spaces that words create through conversation.

Consisting of interviews from thought leaders in Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola and South Africa - it was a knowledge sharing ritual of resistance. What do we imagine when we speak of womxanhood? How do we generate knowledge and inclusion within womxnhood/feminism that is representative of the limited capability of gender to recognise trans and non-binary people? How can art be used as a medium to manifest, empower and bridge narratives? 

It seems that there is a [historical] gap in which we have failed to recognise that non-binary and transgendered individuals have always been a part of our culture; that the politics of gender continue to further separate communities that were once a whole. 

Ongea represents a fraction of the conversations that are happening, and should continue to happen around constructs that exclude and isolate - it is also a love letter; the poetry and “care cards” [postcards] acting as mediums that generate intimacy, that encourage support and softness when dealing with each other. It is a wish for healed bodies, new language and a limitless sense of self. 

 

Supported by the Open Society Initiative of Southern African for Womxns Day.

A special thanks to all the voices and bodies that have contributed to this project; you truly embody the idea that our silence, indeed, does not protect us.