Ukungenisa

In video Ukungenisa, Nandipha Mntambo rehearses the steps of a bullfighter in the abandoned Praça de Touros in Maputo, the arena where black Mozambicans once fought for the entertainment of the colonial Portuguese. The bullfight staged by the artist is an atypical one, as she confronts the metaphoric bull. Physical contact with the animal is sublimated by her wearing a cowhide matador outfit. With an empty arena this once public spectacle has become a private act, a lonely dance, an intimate display of fear and the resulting fearlessness. This deeply moving and highly charged video retains all its power through the absence of a visible threat. The empty shadow makes it more difficult to set the fighting and the protecting apart: as confrontation and refuge, masculine and feminine, aggression and defence, they are by nature at opposite ends of the same spectrum. (Predrag Pajdić)

Organisation: City of Women; In collaboration with: Škuc Gallery; Archives of the Republic of Slovenia.