Queer Transitions: Biographical Space and Black Visuality in the Remains of Apartheid

A quarter century into democratic South Africa, it is a truism that Apartheid’s forms remain present in various ways. ‘Queer Transitions’ asks how sexuality has mediated the contradictory processes that have brought us a progressive Constitution and space for pink capitalism alongside widespread Black queer and trans* death. Black artist–activist–thinker Dr. Beverly Palesa Ditsie has sought to intervene in this fraught problem space in enduringly brave and evocative ways that open portals to futures in which the flourishing of Black lesbian and trans* life “frees  everyone”, in her words.‘Queer Transitions’ is a biographical project centered on the life of Ditsie, combining narrative and visual method, and authored by biographer and biographed in conversation on equal terms. The material will also be archived at the GALA Queer Archives at the University of the Witwatersrand.