Mixedness is my Mythology
For photographer Farren van Wyk, her dual nationality is a core focus of her work. With her images, she explores not only questions of race and identity, but also witnesses how her brother’s identities are forming.
Photography Farren van Wyk
The brothers Alexander (19), Marck-Anthony (15) and Benjamin (11) are in transition. In and out of forming their identity. In and out of expressing it through their personality. From the normal life that they lived before the pandemic to a new normal.
In the past few years, Farren (27), their sister, has been doing projects about the aftermath of apartheid in coloured communities in South Africa. It is her country of birth and the community that she was born into, which makes the body of work a personal quest for identity. Her brothers were born in The Netherlands and she saw how conscious they are of their mixed heritage.
On the farm we call home, the genes of our South African mother meet those of our Dutch father with love. I describe the forming, shifting and shaping of my brothers’ identities as something that is happening or rather dancing in the ‘grey’ area. Black and white are mostly represented as huge contrasts that, when mixed, form shades of grey. This grey area has no limits, referring to the endless possibilities of ones identity becoming tangible in ones personality. In a symbolic manner, my South African mother represents blackness and my Dutch father representing whiteness. Us, their children, are dancing in the grey area that consists of music, family, hair, sports, culture, clothes, everything else and each other.
“In a symbolic manner, my South African mother represents blackness and my Dutch father representing whiteness.”
About Farren
Farren van Wyk (1993) is a South African and Dutch photographer and in the process of becoming a mentor. She graduated from the University of Arts (HKU) in 2016 where she received her BA degree in Photography after an extensive photography and research project with (ex-)gangsters in South African coloured communities in her hometown Port Elizabeth. Trying to centralise coloured people with dignity and make it a normality.
She has been living in The Netherlands for over twenty years and her dual nationality is the crux of her work. The centuries of white Western domination that implemented colonisation, slave trade and the Dutch participation in apartheid is deeply ingrained in the landscape that she was born into. This historical and somewhat troubling relationship between these two countries that she calls home sparks a lot of questions that she tries to answer within her photography projects. Most of the questions stay unanswered, but that is the beauty of the journey.
To see more of her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram
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