I am someone who is interested in documenting and investigating life as I see it around me. I take cognisance of the places I travel to, and attempt to understand the people and cultures I come across. As a child growing up in Soweto, close to Johannesburg, I became familiar with the various ways people adopt, and relate to, particular cultures – and how these are mediated by history, politics, identity, and their economic circumstances. Clothed is the title I have been using for this project for a number of reasons. In most traditionally-black Christian churches and movements in South Africa – with most having their own uniform and therefore a particular semiotic system associated with dress and identity – uniforms are called Izambatho (Zulu) or Diaparo (Sotho) which translates into English simply as ‘clothes’. Looking at the history of colonialism, and in particular, how Africans were referred to as ‘the naked’ and colonisers ‘the clothed’, it becomes apparent how identity can literally be fashioned by dress. The process of acculturation (adopting the culture of the other) is implied in all African Christian churches, and also points to a wider social and cultural conversion to Christianity, and how certain cultural symbols, both inherited and indigenous, are adopted and mediated for particular purposes. With this in mind, my project aims to investigate the relationship between church uniforms and identity, between inherited cultures and traditional rituals, and also notions around performance and embodiment in relation to my position as both photographer and subject.

Born 1981 in Soweto, Johannesburg. Simangele Kalis completed the Foundation Course at the Market Photo Workshop in 2007 and the Intermediate Course in 2008. She completed the Advance Course in 2009 at the same institution. Kalisa’s project on “Coal Sellers”, is on how perceptive observation can cause the isolation of others. On her work on coal sellers she is working with the subject of “belonging” where people are judged by how they look or the work that they do for a living. Kalisa assisted photographer Sally Shorkend for Maverick Magazine in 2007, and was part of “Face Her” a group exhibition for the Woman in Arts Festival in Newtown 2007. Her body of work called “Fafi” series was presented at this festival. Other group exhibitions, “Lost and Found” in 2007 and “Intransit” in 2008 at the Market Photo Workshop Gallery in Johannesburg. She was awarded The Tierney Fellowship Fund in 2009 and out of the fund her work “clothed” was showed at the 2010 New York Photo Festival and also in a group exhibition at Wits University, at the Substation Gallery 2010. She is currently working as a freelance photographer.