‘Oh, There Are Politics in Billie’s Work!’: Billie Zangewa and/at the Boundaries of Feminist Visual Activism

Abstract

This article explores the consequences of reading textile artist Billie Zangewa’s art through the frame of feminist visual activism, both in terms of (i) recognizing the political potential of Zangewa’s work, as well as (ii) interrogating the conceptual boundaries of visual activism. Situating Zangewa’s work within a rich legacy of Black and postcolonial feminist investments in self-love and self-care, and in celebrations of domesticity (‘daily feminisms’ in Zangewa’s words), I argue that Zangewa’s art exemplifies the Black feminist practice of reclaiming the terms under which Black women are looked at, redressing histories of erasure as well as hypervisibility underwritten by the abjection, objectification, sexualization and dehumanization of Black women. Attending to Zangawe’s medium, fabric, I also argue against allegations of the individualised, atomized nature of self-love politics, demonstrating how Zangewa’s modality of self-love is deeply embedded in (rather than hostile to recognitions of) universality, solidarity, and the shared, collective experience of Black womanhood. Finally, reading Zangewa’s work through the lens of Lewis’ (2017) frame of presencing and Campt’s theorization of black visuality as refusal, I make the case for re-thinking visual activism as a relational, inter-subjective exercise in sense-making, generating a range of affects and effects that exceed its sites of production and circulation.