Against the backdrop of persistent violence against queer and BIPOC communities, it is important to celebrate queer joy with fierceness and newness. More than just a keen observer of their immediate (and physical) world, South African-based artist Mercy Thokozane Minah creates work that is insistent and persistent about tenderness. With an unwavering and profound passion for capturing the essence of queerness in their work, Minah’s practice focuses on what it means to be queer, safe, free, and revered in a spiteful world.
Mercy Thokozane Minah (they/them) is a gender-expansive, multidisciplinary maker. Their art centres and reveres the intimacies of Black gender-expansive people. Known for their work, which exists across different mediums like storytelling, visual art, and theatre-making, Minah explores themes of identity, gender, race, and sexuality.
Also an activist, Minah’s artistic process includes building distinctive and vibrant worlds where queer people can be in a place of communion, rest, and joy. “In the story worlds that my visual art exists in, queer joy is a constant, and the Black transqueer figures in those worlds are safe, free, and revered,” they say.
Courtesy of the artist
Minah’s depiction of intimacy between queer people of colour is one of the many ways that their work challenges societal norms and highlights the multifaceted experiences of the queer community. They say, ‘Although queer joy is not something I am unfamiliar with in my life, it also often feels incomplete. I feel there is total jubilation just within our collective reach as queer people, but it remains deferred because we aren’t all safe, free, and revered. We all do our best to be defiantly joyful, seeking, building, and sustaining interpersonal and internal happiness. But there is a greater joy—a complete and uninterrupted joy—that we are owed.”
Courtesy of the artist
In the multiple worlds created by the artist, they make space for conversations emphasizing queer joy. They acknowledge the need for uninterrupted queer joy now and in the face of muffled jubilation.
“I can’t think of our joy without thinking about all the ways it is constantly limited. We are afraid of bigoted family members and our immediate community disowning or harming us, the law deciding it no longer has to protect us, and the world erasing and forcing us to be as small as possible,” said Minah. “There is an urgent need for drastic acceptance, protection, and reverence for us all, and until that is attained, queer joy feels like a daydream at best,” they concluded.
Courtesy of the artist
Iyanuoluwa Adenle is a Nigerian art writer, essayist, and poet based in Lagos. She is currently the head writer at Omenai. Adenle has contributed to a number of art publications, including Tender Photo, Art News Africa, Pavillon 54, and Omenai.
