A BIT ABOUT ME

I have been working with rope since I was a child and have always enjoyed making patterns, weaving mats and bracelets using yarn, string, plastic and rope. As an adult that desire to create interesting objects and visuals led to a photographic exploration of people and objects bound in rope.

I have been tying people up in a private capacity for as long as I can remember and officially started tying people professionally around 2012. This led to a series of public facing photographic collaborations with strangers and friends on the internet. We would curate a photo shoot based on the collaborators star sign  and managed to shoot the entire horoscope.

Naturally my practice evolved over time. It started off as a vanity project based in a Eurocentric framework of rope bondage and other BDSM practices. With more intentional and continuous engagement with other Africans, it became clear there was need to shift the practice into something culturally and site-specific. There was an urgent need to contribute to the collective wisdom around sex and intimacy in the container that is Africa and more specifically, South Africa.

Rope, bondage, BDSM and kink, and the language and ritual contained within often conjure up fear, collective lived and ancestral trauma in Blackness. Striking up images of pain, enslavement and cruelty at the hands of Euro-descendant people. Being a Black man I also represent an oppressive and violent aspect of African masculinity that is at constant tension with gender and sexual expression in a racialised and gendered world.

My work now focuses on trying to impart some good into the world through my own personal introspection and development as a person, and creating joyous, pleasurable experiences for Afro-descendant people. Whether through workshops, classes, private sessions, photo shoots and performances it is important to me that intimacy practices flow from a place that attempts to uncentre power, gender and race and lead with cultural expression, feelings of joy and celebration. I am no longer a practitioner of rope bondage and instead use rope as a tool to further the expression of desire, pleasure and sensuality.

I work with all bodies and can explore play with power but my central motivations lie in Black joy.