ASPIRING Durban artist Tazmé Pillay recalls his first encounter with Durban’s popular Red Eye arts showcase when he was just five years old.
When the event is held this week, the second since its re-birth last month, he’ll be making his debut as a performing artist on the Red Eye stage.
“My first experience at Red Eye was back in its heyday, when it was still an annual happening at the Durban Art Gallery. I must have been five, but I remember it vividly. Meeting drag queens in Victorian-era gowns, an installation made from broken TVs and, of course, the work of my mentor and influence, the legendary Steven Cohen. It was extraordinary, it haunts my senses.
“Looking back at it, I see how much that experience impacted my life. It made me want to make work like that, to be an artist and to create. Remembering the original Red Eye and the admiration I had for those artists means that I am truly honoured to be involved in this rebirth.
“It’s all very surreal, but it’s a dream come true for me. It’s fitting, because my work really is about being ‘reborn’,” he said.
Pillay is set to stage a performance art piece.
“The work explores gender as boundary and ‘Adam’ is the alter-ego I perform as. I also use video and sound art. ADAM: Release is the title of the work I’ll perform.”
He explained: “I have created ‘Adam’, a character which embodies both genders and both spirits and who is born from me, my freedom and my raw sexual power. Adam appropriates the hijras of South India, or the third sex as they are called, and is neither man nor woman. The hijras are seen as taboo in Indian society yet are simultaneously respected as close messengers to the gods, though still they have no rights in their country because of social prejudice and the ‘laws’ of what defines gender.
“So with Adam, I’m ‘going back to Eden’ and presenting a genderless, primitive being that is the manifestation of a spirit that lives within us all; the first true human being, to show how this being exists within us all.”
• Now a monthly event, the next Red Eye Durban takes place on Friday at Emoyeni House in Glenwood from 6pm. Loads of music (hip hop, kwaito, dub-step, reggae), art, performance art, a fashion show, animation, theatre and conceptual vandalism imagery (from Benjamin Fish) is on the cards. R100. For more information see Facebook/ RedeyeDurban.