Windhoek
The Women’s Leadership Centre (WLC), in partnership with the Franco-Namibian Cultural Centre (FNCC), is launching a photographic exhibition at the FNCC gallery at 18h30 tomorrow, followed by a film screening at 20h00.
The exhibition, titled ‘Creating ourselves in our own image’, will run until June 16, providing voice and visibility to the lives of young lesbians from across Namibia, who articulate their resilience and resistance to stigma and discrimination through creative forms of expression.
The evening will offer a reflection on the lives of young lesbians that are negotiated under various forms of oppression in different cultures of our society, exposing them to multiple forms of violence and damaging their self-esteem and identity.
This project of the WLC used creative forms of expression, including writing, dance and photography, as tools for building resilience and pride through increased self-knowledge and sisterhood, enhancing the voice of young lesbians as citizens, as artists and storytellers, in co-creating their dreams, visions and hopes of this country.
The film ‘While You Weren’t Looking’ was produced in 2015 in South Africa by the Out in Africa Film Festival and is based on an original story set in Cape Town. The protagonists are gay and lesbian from all walks of life, whose intertwining tales present a humourous, inventive and dramatic take on contemporary life in South Africa.
It is through the eyes and experiences of a cross-section of queers – black, white and coloured, cruisy singles, married couples with children, city and township dwellers, apartheid survivors and born frees, professionals and skollies – that we see the contemporary South African landscape unfold.
Entrance to the launch and movie is free. The event represents a much-needed contribution towards the process of understanding and supporting people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, and gives lesbian women a voice of their own in Namibia, the organisers say.
The WLC has a long history of empowering lesbian women in Namibia in their struggle against stigma, discrimination and social exclusion on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. It is a feminist organisation based in Windhoek.
Their core activity is to promote women’s writing and other forms of personal and creative expression as a form of resistance to discrimination and oppression embedded in our patriarchal cultures and society, with the aim of developing indigenous feminist activism in Namibia.