Am I “Black” Enough?! (series), 2025
Digital photomontage
Diptych: (2) 59,5 cm x 84 cm
Artist’s Statement
Am I “Black” Enough?! is a visual exploration of belonging, displacement, and the politics of Black identity. Through staged self-portraits and photomontages, I place my body within township landscapes that I did not fully grow up in, yet remain culturally, historically, and imaginatively tied to who I am expected to be. These constructed scenes reveal the tension of being both connected to and alienated from a space that is imagined as home, but instead becomes a site of expectation, memory, and not belonging. My presence within these environments is suspended; simultaneously inside and outside, visible yet unsettled.
My practice emerges from a personal discomfort: the persistent feeling of not being “Black enough” within community, family, and social environments. Growing up in the city, my relationship to the township is mediated through stories, photographs, and inherited histories rather than lived experience. This distance produces an identity gap where I am perceived as too urban to belong, yet too Black to escape cultural categorisation. The use of photomontage reflects this fracture; shifts in scale, light, and composition mirror the emotional dissonance of a hybrid identity.
Influenced by practitioners such as Lebohang Kganye, Zanele Muholi, Mary Sibande, and Santu Mofokeng, my work positions the body as a site of negotiation. Within township streets and spaces, my figure becomes both participant and observer, present, yet not fully absorbed. These works question the politics of authenticity: who defines Blackness, and what forms are deemed legitimate? Thus, Am I “Black” Enough?! asks what it means to inherit a history you did not fully live. It confronts the discomfort of being seen as not enough, too much, or out of place, and seeks a space where identity can exist as fluid, complex, and self-defined.
Image Gallery
