Last year we created a series of interviews, PhotoVogue Female Gaze, to develop the theme explored during the first PhotoVogue Festival in 2016, interviewing some photographers who are part of our community. This year, as we launched our Global open call, Women by Women, our will was to create a more participatory space, where women artists could dialogue and share similarities and differences in their practices and ways of observing reality. That s why we changed the title to Female Gazes.
For its second appointment, we invited Ayomide Tejuoso and Farren van Wyk to have a conversation about existing in-between and in Black female bodies, about displacement and colonialism, everyday acts of resistance, and how to live up to one s politics.
Since their works deal with Blackness and identity, I wanted to give them the space to speak for themselves: the format isn’t a formal interview, but rather a conversation between the two of them, a space to exchange ideas and ask each other questions.
CATERINA DE BIASIO I found out that you both lived in South Africa, and that immediately made me think about putting you in conversation. But beyond that, you both work around “in-between” identities—cultural, national, personal. What I’d like to explore with you is your understanding of this “in-between” space: between nationalities, cultures, and lived experiences.
FARREN VAN WYK The project Mixedness is my Mythology really began with looking at my brothers, especially during the first global lockdown. My mom and I were born here in South Africa, while my brothers and dad were born in the Netherlands. I had just come back from six months in South Africa and was settling in the Netherlands. Two weeks later, the national broadcaster announced the lockdown. My first thought was, will I ever be able to go back to South Africa?
While we were all at home, with the kids doing online school, they suddenly had so much free time. They were listening to Tupac and Biggie, watching NBA games—we’re all obsessed with the NBA—watching films like Straight Out of Compton and Shaft. They were cutting their hair, learning about waves, watching Moroccan barbers on YouTube doing full tutorials.
And I thought: this is fascinating. We were on a Dutch farm in the middle of nowhere, an hour from Amsterdam, and yet we were gravitating towards what I perceived as African-diaspora culture. What did it mean for us to weave these worlds together? I saw my brothers doing it instinctively, and then I became aware of how I was doing it too.
I began thinking about identity, how it’s perceived, who writes about it, and whether I felt represented—which was usually not. Most published work was by white Western authors writing about us without really knowing us. So I started actively looking for people who looked like me, who spoke about community, diaspora, migration, and how these experiences reshape identity.
Through that, I felt mirrored; it helped me piece myself back together. I’ve been working on this for five, almost six years now. My brothers are fed up with me at this point, and the project is slowly coming to an end, which feels right. But I’m happy, it’s becoming a solo show and my first book.
AYOMIDE TEJUOSO I have a question. What is your work trying to introspect or understand? You’ve explained your process, but what is it exploring?
FVW First of all, I’m honoured to meet you—I’ve followed your work, and it’s amazing!
South Africa and the Netherlands share a history of colonialism, enslavement, and apartheid. I was born during apartheid—it’s really not that long ago that it ended. We’re only around the 30-year mark now.
While researching that history, I was confronted with rupture: oppression, segregation, the breaking of land and of Indigenous communities. I was trying to piece myself together: what does it mean to inherit Dutch culture—materially, things like clogs or overalls from living on a Dutch farm—while being born in South Africa, a place shaped by that very rupture?
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What do I want to identify with? What do I connect to? How can I confront that rupture through my work? How do you deal with being born out of something you didn’t choose? You want to be yourself, not a product of that system.
I was racially classified as “coloured.” My family was classified that way under apartheid because we were mixed—too mixed for Western notions. But even those classifications are extremely limited. For a long time I was fighting these internal battles about what it means to be “coloured.” I was carrying a lot of anger, and I learned to channel it into the work, both the confrontation I wanted to provoke in others, and the grace I needed to find for myself.
My brothers inspired me in that too. They were willing to ask: who do I actually want to be, aside from what everyone else says? Meanwhile I was immersed in academic texts—anthropology, identity theory—because of my master’s degree in social anthropology and sociology. They weren’t, and yet they were doing that self-exploration instinctively.
I went deep into understanding the rupture I come from. It broke something in me, but through that break I was able to heal. Photography became a tool to channel rage, sadness, and anger into something constructive.
AT I had a similar experience as an image-maker. I first began photographing for introspection when I was a student in South Africa. I studied in Johannesburg at the African Leadership Academy, a pivotal school that brought together students from across the continent. That was when I became obsessed with South African photographers—Pieter Hugo, Mikhael Subotzky, Zanele Muholi—and also with Asian artists like Ren Hang.
I started with photographing boys but later, when I left South Africa and returned to Lagos, photography turned inward. I didn’t have people to shoot, I didn’t know how to produce shoots, so I used my own body.
What does it mean to be a Black woman? To be hypersexualised? To feel undesired as a fat Black woman with brown skin and prominent features? It became a reckoning: with flesh, with spirit, with grief, with God, with meaning itself. I felt my body meant nothing, that years of projected undesirability and hypersexualisation had collapsed onto me.
So I photographed myself naked, contorting, screaming. Influences from South African photography returned: because I loved Pieter Hugo, I used cow heads or goat heads, and asked my dad to buy them for me. I went upstairs to this unused, dusty part of the house, holding a bloody chicken heart or a goat head, bending into the camera. And when I moved to France, I continued: painting my body white, holding beer cans, twisting myself in front of a door while a friend pressed the shutter. I was completely naked, shouting—my family was horrified.
I understood that my life as a woman artist was about agency, and about embracing waywardness. I was (and still am) deeply influenced by Black feminist thinkers—Saidiya Hartman, especially. I’ve always been ungovernable. At thirteen I told my parents I was a feminist; they said I couldn’t be. But I was. I was a radical feminist before I even had the language. In Nigeria, I didn’t even know I was “Black”—we don’t have that racial hierarchy there. I only knew I was Nigerian, and a woman, and that Nigerian men hated women. That anger fuelled me. It helped me get into school in South Africa.
Through photography I began to realise: I own my body. I own my sex. And when I say “sex,” I don’t just mean gender or the act of sex—I mean the concept of sex, the force, the notion, the energy. I own that. My parents don’t own me. No one owns me.
I’m now in a moment of world-building—creating beings and bodies that are distorted, displaced. Asking how the body can articulate the chaos of the present. I’m working on a personal project called Irregular, and last year I made another project, Pariah, which combined performance and photography. I’m continuing that exploration: how image becomes material, how it becomes installation, performance, scenography, video, how it lives beyond the frame.
Right now I’m thinking about womanhood within displacement. I m thinking about dirtiness, lack, degradation, and where we find ourselves in a world defined by genocide and violence. We re living in a massive recession right now. And I m thinking: how do I think of women in this state of desperation, and how do we introspect the image in this?
FVW Yeah. I love that. When we think about displacement, I m also asking: who was doing the displacement? Because as a person of color, we constantly need to deal with what was done to us. In the art around me and the community I have, I feel like we re rising out of the ashes of displacement and saying: you need to deal with me, not just with your idea of me.
I constantly come back to James Baldwin’s I Am Not Your Negro, the documentary, and in the last bit where he has a TV interview. You can see his heart is broken, as if he’s lost all hope. I think it was a couple of months before he died of cancer. He’s in the States and says if Americans want to think about hope or the future, they have to ask themselves why they needed a Negro.
It helps me to look at the Dutch and their connection with South Africa: the colonial plunder, enslaving people, their complicity with apartheid, and the genocide in Palestine right now. Apartheid is a Dutch word. Why did they need that?
I didn’t ask to be born in apartheid. I don’t think people in Palestine are asking to be in the situation they’re in right now. So flipping it back: why do you need it? Which is interesting because you see they’re clinging to it for their life.
AT Something about James Baldwin is frightening: something written 50 years ago still feels so current. That’s the scariest thing. It makes you think about this notion of “end times,” especially in Christianity. Has it ever shifted after years of persistent violence? And again it comes to displacement and community. In the world we live in, defined by a colonial framework, disaster is the context we operate from.
I think the base of my art practice is: what is disaster, and how do you capture the aesthetics of disaster? And I don’t mean disaster as in taking pictures of marginalised people suffering. I mean: how do you create fantasy that negotiates disaster and the sublime? Because that is what we exist in.
Moving to London from Europe in January, I’ve come to understand that every country the UK colonized reflects the same disaster it operates. There’s no difference between Lagos and London. It’s so interesting to see how each place projects its own disaster. They leave remnants of their own disaster in the countries they colonise.
So my fascination now is: what does emancipation look like aesthetically?
FVK I also feel that what you said about aesthetics really inspired me. When I shared Mixedness Is My Mythology, first in the Netherlands, a lot of white people were drawn to it. They always wanted to know: “Oh, what’s the symbolism? What’s going on here? It’s so beautiful.” And when I said, “I was born in apartheid, I’m confronting anthropology—the creation of anthropology as social studies, using the camera as a tool for racial classification” people were shocked, as if I’d verbally punched them. Which was kind of the goal.
I also started to realise that my images, aesthetically, draw people in. For me it was also love, agency, taking back. That was the aesthetics: I am beautiful, this is how I look, you’re going to deal with it. But I will tell my story. I was born in apartheid, and you will deal with it.
People who look like me said, “I’m starting to see myself. I’ve never really seen myself,” because on the street and on billboards you’re not there. We’re living in a world centering whiteness and capitalism. And capitalism comes from colonialism—you can’t detach the two. The VOC, the Dutch enslaving enterprise, was the first capitalistic entity. Capitalism is always racializing. To end the capitalistic world is to end racialisation. But to physically do that, everything would have to break down and burn.
AT I feel what you re saying. There’s a lot of confusion we live in as people and as women. And it’s sad, but we have a responsibility to recognise it in our work. We should. I think we must. But we also live in capitalism, and we have to survive with our introspection. And right now I ask: do you think your practice is a place for you to really be responsible for what the world is? Because I explore that, but I don’t know if I truly live my politics. Do you live your politics? What does that mean for you?
FVW I m learning to live my politics because this project came out of a deep depression. I was going through severe panic attacks and didn’t know if I would make it out. Losing control of your body, not knowing if you go to sleep whether you ll wake up in a panic attack or never wake up. My body was signaling that at the pace I was going, and with the things I was doing the way I was doing them, we wouldn’t survive. I had to take a step back.
And then you re also realizing that you re doing all of this because you re in this capitalistic rat race. And when you slow down, you freak out because you think, yeah, but then I m going to die if I slow down.
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So I m in this phase of re-learning who I am, who I want to be, how I want to live my life, and how I want to move in relationships, communities, friendships. I m trying to figure out what it is that I stand for.
But I m now also understanding and seeing my complicity. I m consciously saying, I m complicit in this, and I would like to see a world where I m not, or where this opens up and ruptures. I m learning to be open and honest. And then the question becomes: if we’re saying it, how can we also live it, embody it, embrace it if we want something else?
So I find myself doing little things — taking a day off, taking a day’s rest, saying at the magazine I work at that I don’t want to talk about African people in that way. It feels like water drops, but I m willing to fight for the water drops, for those small moves.
AT I think I find myself in this very capitalistic framework out of survival. I’ve become a capitalist — not because I believe in capitalism, but because I’ve realized that there are so many hierarchical frameworks to become a big photographer and then a contemporary artist. There’s so much play. It s all performance. There’s no real community. You network during art weeks to be in the right rooms with curators, to get into exhibitions. Nothing comes by chance. You re emailing the same brands and people, going out, making proofs of concept in your personal work.
I run an educational program called Zero Radiation, a free research laboratory engaging Black aesthetic theory and producing Black aesthetics. As I was talking to people in the program, we sat down for six hours straight, introspecting the image and what it means. And I felt fulfilled caring. Sometimes all you need is dialogue. Sometimes all you need is caring. And we need real art practice.
Maybe learning to live my politics is learning to make real art. And the people I make art with must be equitably compensated — not always financially, because we don’t have money — but in what the practice is. In my own art practice, what am I doing for my community? How am I creating spaces that give back energetically?
Maybe practicing my politics means living a more guided life that decenters this desperation to “make it.” Because I will eventually make it. I won’t stop buzzing, I won’t stop producing. But maybe it’s about knowing when to stop and creating spaces that give back.
I realised I need to stop operating from desperation and move into creative acceptance and creative revolution. I have to build my language, build who I am, and sacrifice for art that is introspective. Going back to being real and being pure, that’s my political answer.
I ask myself: what am I doing? Am I being so desperate to build a language just so I can have seven editorial covers that don’t matter? What am I doing for an idea, a vision, a practice? So living my practice means finding places I can give back to, building my own spaces, and making an art practice that means something.
FVW The dialogue you said you do for free — people gathering, talking honestly about survival and art — that is already part of practicing your politics. Sometimes it’s the smallest things: creating a bubble where we can say, I’m struggling, I’m trying to survive, but I want to make my art and figure things out.
You have such amazing dreams, and I feel like I do too, but sometimes I freeze because it feels like getting there will take time and I don’t know how. But I hope you don’t forget that sometimes it’s as small as a drop of water. You doing this, letting people like Delali come in and inspiring others to take mechanisms into their own communities — that is already building something.
And doing that, you re stepping out of the capitalist enterprise. You’re resting, listening, not running a thousand miles doing five jobs. And I want to thank you for that — even though I m not there.
We are living on the downside of everything that happened in history. I grew up in the Netherlands, but I had to understand where I came from. And yet, I also see the contradictions. Why was I in the Netherlands, a wealthy country, and still so depressed? This didn’t happen in South Africa. Slowly, I made a conscious decision that I want my practice to be more based in South Africa.
There is something in Europe, in the Netherlands, that cannot give me that. All the disaster and grief that started there is still present, remnants of rupture that are hidden but pervasive. Europe presents itself as the place where you “should be” if you want a life, which is why people migrate there seeking a better life. But then they are pushed back, told, “No, you have to go back.” White Western European communities aren’t introspective, yet they blame others.
They have walled themselves off from Africa, and Africa is still trying to grow from the damage created. They present Europe as heaven, but when people come, the message is: “You can’t, this is for white people.” And suddenly, people of color are framed as the problem — when in reality, they inherit a system that is the real problem. That’s where my depression, identity issues, and mental strain came from: I was forced to carry a burden I never asked for.
Now, in South Africa, I see these mechanisms at work and I ask myself: what am I complicit in? How do I forgive myself? How do I find grace? Photography has always been a way to process that.
AT It’s striking that the laws used to marginalise Black and brown people abroad are the same laws that divide white people within their own countries. There’s no introspection, only rage. Leaders enabled our oppression in Africa, and now local leaders are perpetuating it. Systems fail, yet blame is misdirected.
My final question is about AI and technology. How will these tools affect image-making, how we see women, and how women see themselves? AI seems like another disastrous context. Billion-dollar bubbles are being funneled while real destruction happens. AI marginalises people, often in ways beyond job loss.
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FVW What I found myself asking is: how do we practice politics in our lives? Do we rest? Do we breathe? Do we slow down? Do we build a world that actually cares for itself and others?
CDB That theme — existing in inefficiency, in ways the world considers “failure” — keeps coming up. Women are exploring what it means to slow down, to work for free, to create outside capitalist measures of success. Your work embodies that, exploring discomfort and the way the system isn’t working, even for the privileged. Even for those of us who work in corporate institutions or have resources, it’s hard to navigate this system. Art, community, and practice remind us that the world isn’t built to work for anyone fully, and that’s essential.
So, do you want to share practical tips for young artists or people who want to do the same job coming from a similar background? And since you talk a lot about community and giving back, would you like to name people who helped you in your artistic journey but also in your personal growth?
AT I want to thank the people and institutions that shaped me. My mom and dad gave me the foundation to pursue art freely. Their guidance — the books, the conversations, the encouragement — shaped who I am as an artist. My brother, Toby Tej, inspired me with his introspection and research. Matthieu Delbreuve and many friends in Lagos, but also the Foam Amsterdam team propelled me in my early artistic journey. Platforms like PhotoVogue gave me access, visibility, and support, and being part of that growth was transformative. My current project collaborators, Sandra, Brutus Labiche, have propelled me forward.
My advice for young artists: stay true to yourself, create your own networks, find institutions that care about you, and position yourself in rooms that matter to you. Build safety and support around yourself, and let that community become your vanguard.
FVW For me, it’s also my cousin Ynge van Wyk, who has been like a manager, supporter, and anchor through existential crises. My friend Marta Camagna in the Netherlands empowered me to assert myself, understand organizational dynamics, and claim my boundaries. In Cape Town, I’ve found a beautiful community of photographers who’ve welcomed me, which has strengthened my projects and allowed me to grow without isolation.
I would suggest always do you. Don’t let others mold you into what fits their vision or their organisation. Set boundaries, define how you want to be treated, how your work should be represented, and demand respect. This is essential as your practice grows, and it empowers you to navigate institutions, collaborations, and opportunities confidently. Fighting the world is hard, but sometimes the hardest part is fighting yourself. Choosing yourself, your values, and your practice is immensely difficult but deeply beautiful.
