M HKA Ensembles

Video

Collection: Courtesy of the Artist.

Born in 1993 in Nelspruit South Africa, Megan-Leigh Heilig grew up in Johannesburg, graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a Bachelor in Fine Art (BFA) in 2015; in 2017 she completed her Masters in Fine Art (MFA) at the University of Cape Town; in 2019 she completed a residency at the Higher Institute of Fine Art (HISK) in Ghent, Belgium.

It’s Where You Find Yourself (2020)

The film is a visual archive documenting some of the challenges and successes of temporary queer nightlife spaces in South Africa with the racial, social and economic barriers present in many (if not all) communities. Stories are candidly told by event organizers, DJs, burlesque dancers and curators who are shaping and reshaping the nightlife scene in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. The interviews point to questions like “what makes a community?” and “how do we ensure the sustainability of these safe spaces for the future?”

Heilig is interested in expanding this visual archive to include other individuals, spaces and events which are inspiring new ways of thinking about how to create safer spaces where women and queer people can explore their sexuality without becoming the targets of harassment or abuse. Most of the organizers and dancers she interviewed had a personal impact on my life and journey as a queer person. The Unofficial Pink Party and the Rouge Revue Burlesque Company were some of the spaces that sheltered her when she was coming out and also the spaces where she and her wife fell in love. That’s why she felt it was deeply important to archive and document the work that is going into creating future ‘protocols’ and creating structures that might better protect the queer community post-Orlando, and in the current global political climate of right-wing extremism, fearmongering and homophobia. The text read by Kelly titled “Please Don’t Stop the Music” by Richard Kim was read by her in 2016 a few days after the Orlando shooting at a Naked Girls Reading Event. Heilig remembers being moved by the resilience in her voice, standing naked and unashamed, reminding us all that the music will not stop and cannot stop because people like her and Janine will continue to play it louder.

Heilig would like to continue interviewing individuals and organizations and to discuss other ways of making the archive a useful resource for the future development and sustainability of other spaces. She’d like to host screenings and workshops where these issues could be further unpacked and perhaps collectively more ideas could be exchanged and shared on how to go about doing that. At the same time, she is also interested in imagining different ways for the work to be exhibited and would like to explore this as video installation.

https://www.meganleighheilig.org/