CLASS DESCRIPTION

bell hooks, celebrated author, theorist, educator, and social critic, used the term ‘oppositional gaze’ to describe the resistant strategies Black Women and Queer imagemakers employ to challenge the colonial and patriarchal gaze. In their lecture ‘Oppositional Gaze: Black Feminist Photography as Feminist Resistance’, Janine Francois will use this term to analyse how photography has been used to both reinforce stereotypes and to reclaim self-identification through the work of Black female artists.

Janine will help understand how the colonial use of photography reinforced damaging stereotypes about Black people’s sexuality to justify their racial and gendered hierarchies. She’ll then delve into the practices of Sonia Boyce, Zanele Muholi, Favour Johnathan and Khadija Saye who all use photography to frame the Black female and or queer subject through self-representation, storytelling, humour, and critique; with each artist challenging the supposed ‘neutral-white-male-human-subject by centring Black Women and Queer identities.

ABOUT OUR LECTURER

Janine Francois is a Black Feminist-Killjoy, Writer, Academic in Exile, Time Traveller, Cultural Producer and a Consultant. Janine is a Visiting Lecturer at Royal College of Art and Ph.D student at Tate Britain and the University of Bedfordshire.

INSTAGRAM: @itsjaninebtw
WEBSITE: itsjaninebtw.com

Banner image: Zanele Muholi

This is a recording of a live session hosted by The Feminist Lecture Program in July 2024. The reading list for the class can be found alongside this rental.

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