Defending Our Futures

This portrait of me was done at the AWID Forum in Capetown by South African artist Gabrielle Le Roux. It's a part of Defending Our Futures, a project to capture images and words of feminist movement leaders and changemakers. The final project will include these portraits, our written statements, and audio interviews with each of us.

I first met Gabrielle in Nairobi, at the World Social Forum in 2007. She asked if I would sit for a portrait then, but I was overcommitted, she was staying a long way outside town, and the logistics just didn't come together. When I walked into her in the main hallway, on my first day at AWID, it was clearly serendipity.

I sat for the portrait that afternoon. It took 3 hours. For the first 90 minutes, I was semi-dozing, catching up on my sleep deficit from the 48 hours of travel. It was hard for her to draw me that way:

It's like your face is disintegrating!

So I stretched, yawned, shook myself out. Did pranayama and exercises to warm up and energize my face and body. Then the portrait came alive under Gabrielle's magic pencil.

I like the sense of purpose she's captured in the lines of my face. A kind of confident determination, which I don't always feel, but certainly reach for in my work.

I like the flashes of colour against the black and white. The pink scarf, one of thousands handed out by the Young Feminists At AWID, worn to display a commitment to intergenerational organizing. Turquoise earrings from Migritude's coastal run last year. Silver bindi between my eyebrows - just slightly visible in this image - which Gabrielle asked me to take off my own forehead and "donate" to the portrait.

I love being among this brave company of extraordinary women.

For more on Defending Our Futures, contact:

Gabrielle Le Roux livingancestors@gmail.com
Sipho Mthathi siphomthathi@hotmail.com

You can see other projects by Gabrielle here, and here.