Contours of Resistance

Plotting novel behaviours that challenge conventional systems of living is a continuous

existential process for creating multiple identities and ways of thinking to survive in a
dynamic environment. The personal consciousness reigns. An inner awareness and self-
introspection that questions emerge to challenge norm and creates multiplicities of meaning
and perspectives that anchor the body and mind in times of crisis, or not. Within systems,
historic traditions, and happenings, experiential issues question, represent and prevent diverse
insinuations of how a person survives, their values, how they communicate and what they
find important to find, build and preserve self-identity in these extraordinary changing times.
Friendships, the body, feelings, symbols, objects perception, events, and personality
proposition diverse means for thinking through resistance by presenting new perspectives for
imagining substantial ways of existing.
Metaphors of resistance engender multiple sites of social enquiry and narratives that collapse
hierarchical structures of power and centres an individual’s perspective of acceptance. Within
the process of knowing, acknowledgement and being known, embracing refusal of typical
perceptions intensifies self-preservation and protection in everyday struggles. Challenging
systems, remembering, and forgetting, interpretations, and representations constructs
different power dimensions that present new possibilities of being based on resisting terms
and conditions that diminish eligibility for distinctiveness.
Existing in spaces where restrictions and selectivity are being redefined and reconfigured,
issues of identity and personal freedoms are contested, and they evolve into sites of social and
personal resistance in pursuit of more tolerable conditions of well-being. Resistance requires
the manifestation and incarnation of all internal reserves to sufficiently survive with a
spectrum of psychological, physical, and social pressures. Resistance builds delineations of
protests for oneself and for others; and encourages learning and enhances the ability to keep
moving amongst many alternatives. Refusal is an antidote to the pressure to conform with a
certain subculture and inspires more outrageous ways of living and expression.
Contours of resistance presents visual diaries of four artists projecting feelings, sharing
emotions and opinions on different aspects of everyday life. Each artwork in some way
represents the internal struggles, thinking processes and outcomes that build contours, shapes,
and curves to navigate the different dynamic series of life. The artwork responds to a shift in
perspective and thinking in society within the context of spectacular changes in perspective
and opinion in the face of the internal and external struggles.
Alternative forms of being expressed in symbols, materiality composition and different
interpretations form an array aesthetics of resistance and protests. The exhibition
consequently represents multiple configurations interactions that attempt to comprehend the
current and past histories. Each artwork has the intent to form and organise internal and
external ways to preserve unconventionality and counter societal expectations.
Ultimately, personal notions of resistance, refusal, identity, and reinterpretations of social
emotional, psychological, and physical occupations indicate how extraordinary the mind and
the body can gather itself to reframe individuality and independence. Whether the forms of
resistances are helpful or not depends on the individual. However, it is evident that
delineations in thinking, action, remembering and forgetting must exist to achieve
indispensable freedoms that defend individual and imagined identities.
Curator
Laura Fungai Ganda