Halfa Pictcha: Half

Halfa Pictcha is an open collective collaboration between Tasmin Jade Donaldson, Megan Heilig, Teresa Firmino & Jamy-Lee Brophy. The collaboration came together in their third year of study at both the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Witswaterstrand respectively. Our practice is concerned with questioning the ways in which photography, gender and identity are valued and played-out in contemporary South African societies.

We feel that that through performance, site specific engagements, multi-media sculpture
and photography our work could generate new discussions on issues around space and
social concerns which play out in different spaces, such as gender, race, geography
and cultural practice. Our modes of working aim to facilitate diverse and at times radical
conversations about the ways in which art is valued, the ways in which bodies and
identities are valued as well as how certain, at times invisible and other times hyper-
visible, hegemonic politics may be subverted through serious play and engagement with
every-day household objects.

Halfa Pictcha intends to grow, make noise and show face, or not...

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I Object

To object

Objects of affection

Object-I-fication

Object-ify

Object-ive:

Studio-shoot

‘Progress’

Interface between Europe/West and Africa

Africa of the mind- Tracey Rose

What is being objectified?

Are we being objectified?

No, we’re challenging the way women have been used as symbols: art represented in

the image of woman. Taking the objects and activating them in different ways,

challenging this process.

The construction of Africa and the West in relation to one another, the way African art,

and most art, is valued and devalued according to Western and European Ideals.

Confronting issues of colonialism, exoticism and excess. We have imagined this

Western style house, with a white picket fence, inside of Johannesburg, South Africa,

Africa.

Within this house is a blend of ideals and constructions which together create the

middle-class domestic sphere. In which gender roles and ideologies are played out and

reinforced. We challenge this reductive model of heteronormative expectations and

interrogate the domestic environment, the domestic object and the domesticated self.

We have photographed ourselves in three rooms of our ‘not home’: the entrance hall-

where the interface occurs; the Bathroom- where the sins of colonial dirt/grime/filth is

confronted; and Kitchen- the space in which the good of labor is enacted and the

domestic goddess and the domestic object consummate their union.

Play with the Gaze.

Conspicuous consumption.

To consume.