The Exorcism of Mary Magdalene:

A Sexual Resurrection

“The realm of the dead, my home…

Imagine the world as a whore and the realm of the dead as my final resting place.

YAAAAAAAAAAAS bitches! My Christian name is Lucifer!”

I bring forward The Exorcism of Mary Magdalene: A Sexual Resurrection, a project stemming from the innate exhaustion our bodies exist in. Black Queer Femme bodies are in the constant performance of their identity, through the forced removal of our biography in the Cultural, Traditional and Historical Archive of this very land. This work therefore becomes an exploration of belonging, in a liminal state of placelessness. I look at the potentiality of dreams as a means of tracing one’s archival narratives. I believe that dreams are a medium utilized by those who walked before us as a communicative tool of explicating the narratives that are inherently found and living within our bodies.

“Ezinzulwini zemilemze yam, ndivuthelwa ngumlilo onesitshisa. Kuvuze umhluzi, ndiqaqanjelwe lubetho lwebentse kabuhlungu. Undibona ndibufenqeza ubuntomi bam? Ndisasaza imelenze yam phez’kobuso bakho na?”

I propose that through performance, transgenerational narratives exist and are carried in our bodies. An ancestral visual montage haunting us in our dreams, thought and the performativity of our ancestral identity, seeking to sediment a performative historiography that is missing in our current contemporary.

“Ndimanzi, ndibuthakathaka wena ubatyelwa ngamavumba amnandi namabi ebentse eNgcwele yeZulu. Undibona ndingumthombo lwenkanuko zakaThixo? Ibentse yesizwe kaloku, eyazekwa nguThixo wenu umDali wentozonke, yena yedwa! Malibongwe igama leNkosi! Ngebentse eyazekelwa isizwe sonke sase Africa…rhaa imnandi ikuku xa ku njalo!”