On 28 April 2023, Deneesher Pather, Assistant Lecturer in Visual Studies and Doctoral Student in Digital Media & Culture, took part in the Four Corners Feminism, Photography & Resistance Symposium. This research event brings together an international group of artists, writers and thinkers. It is produced in collaboration with Kylie Thomas of the NIOD institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, editor of a special issue of MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture journal published in Spring 2022.

Deneesher presented on her upcoming article for the special issue Intimacy and play as resistance: reimagining Black female representation in the photographs of Noncedo Charmaine.

The article reflects on the photographs of Noncedo Charmaine, a Cape Town-based artist whose works explore authenticity and beauty through intimate photographs of Black female bodies. With play and connection as her guidelines, Charmaine’s portfolio reimagines depictions of Black female bodies in diverse ways that celebrate their agency and individuality. As an artist in search of an alternative South African art archive, Charmaine’s photographs renew narratives of Black female bodies through an awareness of iconographical precedence and body politics.