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  • J.S.W 2024

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    Tucked away in case 43 of the Pitt Rivers Museum one can find a straw beard and eyebrows. The accompanying label says ‘These symbols of manhood were worn by the (Angolan) bride for a short time after the wedding ceremony before moving into her husband’s home’…
    Tucked away in case 43 of the Pitt Rivers Museum one can find a straw beard and eyebrows. The accompanying label says ‘These symbols of manhood were worn by the (Angolan) bride for a short time after the wedding ceremony before moving into her husband’s home’…

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  • MATRIMONIAL RITUALS AND FALSE FACIAL HAIR

    PROJECT AND EXHIBITION
    PITT RIVERS MUSEUM, OXFORD, 2013
    AFTER WEARING, THE PRATT INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, 2015
    MATRIMONIAL RITUALS AND FALSE FACIAL HAIR

    PROJECT AND EXHIBITION
    PITT RIVERS MUSEUM, OXFORD, 2013
    AFTER WEARING, THE PRATT INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, 2015

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    In response, I made false facial hair for 30 female volunteers from London. The outcome is a film of these women, attempting to understand the matrimonial ritual of this object. The fact that the beards are not realistic, makes it clear they are not to be mistaken for a disguise, but instead become a kind of ritual tool for looking and being looked at. The beard and the wearer together become interlocutors in a discussion of gender, desire, sexuality, masochism and physical beauty.

    In the final weeks of the project our steps lead us to discover footage of the original artifacts being used. In 1937 the sisters, Antoinette and Diana Powell-Cotton, documented the four-day Efundala marriage ceremony in Angola. For a short period towards the end of the ceremony the young Kwanyama girls would wear the false beards and eyebrows, and ‘become’ for that period ‘bridal boys’. This section of the footage is shown in the film above.

    Although the discovered documentation from 1937 gives a greater insight into the ritual and it’s society, the emotive significance of it to the Kwanyama women involved is still left open to the imagination.

    Original footage used with the kind permission of the Powell-Cotton Museum, Kent
    In response, I made false facial hair for 30 female volunteers from London. The outcome is a film of these women, attempting to understand the matrimonial ritual of this object. The fact that the beards are not realistic, makes it clear they are not to be mistaken for a disguise, but instead become a kind of ritual tool for looking and being looked at. The beard and the wearer together become interlocutors in a discussion of gender, desire, sexuality, masochism and physical beauty.

    In the final weeks of the project our steps lead us to discover footage of the original artifacts being used. In 1937 the sisters, Antoinette and Diana Powell-Cotton, documented the four-day Efundala marriage ceremony in Angola. For a short period towards the end of the ceremony the young Kwanyama girls would wear the false beards and eyebrows, and ‘become’ for that period ‘bridal boys’. This section of the footage is shown in the film above.

    Although the discovered documentation from 1937 gives a greater insight into the ritual and it’s society, the emotive significance of it to the Kwanyama women involved is still left open to the imagination.

    Original footage used with the kind permission of the Powell-Cotton Museum, Kent

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    Kwanyama women of Angola dressed as ‘bridal boys’ in 1937
    Kwanyama women of Angola dressed as ‘bridal boys’ in 1937

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    Ring. Gold.
    Ring. Gold.

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  • COLLABORATION BETWEEN STEVEN OUNANIAN AND JOANNE WARDROP

    DE-CENTRE-DER-SPACE RESIDENCY PROGRAM, MARSEILLE CAPITAL OF CULTURE, FRANCE
    PUBLICATION LAUNCHED AT CGP (CAFE GALLERY PROJECT), LONDON, 2013
    COLLABORATION BETWEEN STEVEN OUNANIAN AND JOANNE WARDROP

    DE-CENTRE-DER-SPACE RESIDENCY PROGRAM, MARSEILLE CAPITAL OF CULTURE, FRANCE
    PUBLICATION LAUNCHED AT CGP (CAFE GALLERY PROJECT), LONDON, 2013

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