Can you introduce yourself?
So I am Cyan Peppah (pronounced Cayenne Peppah). I consider myself an artist. I was born in Cape Town, and I’ve lived across the country, but Cape Town is my home and where I’m operating from, working from, doing my art from and learning from, and experiencing from. I am 33 years old even though I don’t look it [laughs], and yeah I am an artist; it took me a very long time to say those words, but I’m an artist. I’m an artist because I took something that was natural to me, that I enjoy doing, and I did it regularly, and other people saw it and enjoyed it and other people hated it and and other people didn’t understand it and some people asked to do more. And people actually asked me to do it for them, and some people offered me money to do it. And it is my voice.
I’m a very quiet shy introverted kind of person. It's kind of funny, when I meet people who maybe I’ve known through social media for a few months, they’re always surprised by how introverted I am because their first introduction to me is the visual, and the visual is usually my Instagram because that’s what I used in the past as my creative outlet for my photography or videography. So when people meet me in person, they’re sometimes expecting the Cyan Peppah-ness of it you know, and I’m just like a quiet, little shy person, minding my own business. So for me, my art is my voice. My art is the medium for me to share what is on my mind. It's not always very clear; sometimes its very cryptic because I don’t usually use a lot of voice or written form in my expression. It's all visual, especially with my video work, and maybe I’ll use a musical track that kind of hints towards the feel and the mood, but there would almost never be any dialogue. So the next part of the journey is more deliberate storytelling. If I, for example, were to do a video project and you were to see me and I would be acting out something, you would see the action, you would see the message, but you wouldn’t see me. I do believe it's really important for the audience to really connect with artists, because that’s how you make art accessible. When I first started in the world of art, I would go to galleries and would always feel like an outsider, like I wasn’t creative enough or having the same conversations as the ones I was overhearing. Another reason I want to be deliberate is literally do the things I say I want to do; if I want to say my work speaks to queer visibility and body positivity, I want to say those words, and be direct with it.
What is becoming to you?
I think a big part of becoming for me, especially in the context of where society wants to hates you, is to be the most exaggerated version of yourself but also the most beautiful version of yourself and not reserving that for special occasions, but making sure that it's part of your day to day life. So that process for me started about four years ago and it started with my name, Cyan Peppah. So Cyan Peppah the name is a funny story. I was getting ready for a music festival and I was making a neckpiece with black and cyan feathers. I took a selfie, and thought “okay this looks cool, I’m going to post this to social media” but I’m really bad at captioning images, normally I just post as is. So I was thinking, “should I put cyan because of the feathers?”. At the same time, I was watching Paris is Burning and Pepper Labeija was doing a monologue at that very moment. And I was just thinking “Cyan or Cayenne Peppah” And then when I said Cyan (cayenne) Peppah, it took it back to a line from Jill Scott, from her first album, a track called Love Rain, where she makes reference to cayenne pepper in a very sexual way. And I was like “Cyan Peppah, yes!” and so I put that as the caption. One of my friends Ina Propriette, one of the more known drag queens in Cape Town, she commented saying, “Oh is this your new drag name?” and I was like “Yeah! That has a nice ring to it”. So from that point, whenever I did a look, I would always do the look as Cyan Peppah. But I think over time, the looks that I did, going to the club, going to events, just started merging with my day to day life. And when I’m talking about being very intentional or being very exaggerated, it's not putting on a show, it's like being very intentional with how you identify and what’s comfortable for you and what’s important for you. What’s important for me is queer visibility. What’s important for me is creativity; being able to colour outside of the lines; playing with all the toys at the same time. So for me becoming is that process you do every single day when you wake up, when you kind of have to amp yourself up to go out in the street and wear the crop top or wear the pants that are a feminine cut and wear it because you love wearing it and you feel good in it. But also knowing you might get a comment or there might be a physical reaction, but you just need to do it because you keep on hiding and you can’t keep hiding forever.
What were some of the pivotal moments of becoming for you?
During that time [around 4 years ago], I had just come out of a long term relationship, so I was moving around trying to find a new place to stay. I moved into this house share in Observatory, and that’s where I met four of my best friends, and it was weird because I had known all of them before, but because of circumstances, how we all got together at that one house at the same time, it just made sense. So we are all creative, and we all knew each other before; one was my ex’s brother, the other was my ex’s best friend [chuckles], so we all kind of knew each other, but we never worked together, never hung out together, and now we were all living together. And one of our favorite things to do was to sit in the backyard, get stoned, get drunk and be crazy- dance, play music, paint, discuss, debate, challenge, whatever. And that turned into us wanting to do it in a more formal sense. I don’t know if you are familiar with Erf 81 farm, but it's an abandoned military base which has been occupied illegally by this community of street people, people who live in the street, but also artists and they’ve pretty much reclaimed the space and turned it into artist studios. They also started growing crops and had sheep, goats, horses, cows, ducks, and turned it into a sustainable community. And it was beautiful because it was a sustainable community in the middle of the city, right in the center of CBD Cape Town. But because the occupation was illegal, they were going to be evicted. And one of our friends, Babalwa Tom, she actually used to stay on the farm for some time, had a connection to it. So we were like “okay we’re a bunch of cool kids who always talk about wanting to change the world- I want to actually change the world”. So we formed the collective, we called ourselves Trybe Collective, and we chose to do our activism through events. So our first event was held at Erf 81 farm, it was called Grooves & Grows, and it was basically to showcase the beauty of the farms. There was a big focus on sustainable living and sustainable working as well, so all of the artists that performed would have some sort of sustainability message in their expression or their art. For example, I did my first solo exhibition for the event, and that spoke of threats, or the human threat. I approached my friend and drag performer Ina Propriette about a photoshoot I wanted to do specifically for Grooves & Grows. We shot from where I was living at the time, And Ina pretty much did a full face, but she was nude, so had a boy body with a female face, which kind of spoke to the human threat from a queer perspective and the threat of being yourself.
So that was the first event, and we had a second event at the farm again as well called Designed Systems, and each one of us got a turn to curate an event. So this one as curated by Jessie Goosen, and it was more about sustainable fashion. And then the event I curated was hosted at WorldArt gallery, in town, and it was a photographic project, and we shifted from sustainability to what I called Queer2.18 (Queer two point eighteen). Queer2.18 was about the process that I had been following with my own personal journey when it comes to sexuality and just being visible. So we worked with 12 queer creatives of different expressions- we had photographers, painters, dancers, musicians, we had standup comedians, we had a lot of people [laughs]. Different bodies, different shapes, different colors, and one thing that tied them all together was that they were queer people. So yeah, that was very important for me because that was when I accepted or understood that what I do is art- art doesn’t need to mean you’ve gone to art school or whatever you’re doing is in a frame hanging in a gallery, you know? If you are doing something, if you’re creating something, and it has the power to affect some sort of change or discussion or debate, that is art. So that was also a very significant period of time for me.
And another really important moment was meeting Dianne and Allison [friends of ours] because at that point I have now decided to be who I am, I have decided to be visible, but I was still having conversations around gender and gender identity. So especially meeting with Dianne, we spent a lot of time speaking about gender. And I never really wanted to define my gender because I didn’t really truly understand what it was because it [gender] was definitive and clear. For example, I never wanted to use non-binary, because for me non-binary is still means something very specific. So through conversations with Dianne, I got a better sense of what my gender identity is; I mean it will probably change, it is always changing, and I know now that I’m gender non conforming because I feel extremely masculine and extremely feminine at the same time and I love both equally. I am not trying to hide the one or amp up the one, they literally both exist at the same time. It's not like when I go to the club, I feel feminine, and when I’m in the street, I’m more masculine; when I’m walking down the road, I literally feel both at the same time. So it's not like a non-existence of gender but it's both existing at the same time, and equally. So for me that as a really important part of the journey. Becoming is continuous, it never stops.
How does art help you become?
Art is a bit of a buffer; sometimes it's easier to say something in a video, put it on social media and you physically don’t have to deal with the consequences, because sometimes the consequences aren’t so easy to deal with- doesn’t matter how bad of a bitch you think you are. Art is a bit of protection or shield, or armour that you wear. And I don’t necessarily see it as a negative because amour can be dope, it can be pretty [laughs] it can be sparkly and shiny you know? While I’m still coming into my own which may sound funny for a 33 year old, but I will continue to find ways of doing what I need to do and saying what I need to say, and art has consistently been that vehicle for me.
Also, I’m working on a jewelry collection and the jewelry collection is an extension of my identity because it's something that I use to show my queerness and show my playfulness, and show whatever I want to show. It's a very definitive decision what I wear on a daily basis, it's not just what matches with what but it's what energy the piece carries. For me going into creating jewelry is an extension of the journey as well. It's also like sharing the story. I also want to use the Afrikaans language in the branding and promotion. I want to use Cape Afrikaans terms, words, slogans, things like that. And that’s another thing I’m really focusing on, that is that the Afrikaans language because Afrikaans is effectively a Black language. If you look statistically, most Afrikaans speakers in the world is Black people. The first people who spoke Afrikaans were Black people. The first book that was published in Afrikaans was written by a Black person, so it is a Black language. But because of the history of our country, the language got appropriated in the 19th century by white settlers, and now we’ve grown to hate something we had a hand in creating, so it's also partly reclaiming that. Being blatantly queer, being blatantly Afrikaans, and being blatantly naked at the same time [laughs] is a big part [of becoming]. I started with self photography; I just took photos of myself and over time I started wearing less and less and less, and the thing about that was I was really uncomfortable with my body. The first people who told me I was too skinny were my family, which extended into friends, and the community. I was never really taught to love my body, and you know as a kid, your gran would say “eat more”, and even just people on the street would say “oh no one really wants this body”. And sometimes it’s really difficult speaking about that because it’s like you as a skinny person, what do you have to complain about because that’s seen as the ideal body? But as a kid you were never taught to love your body, love that, you’re not going to love that. So self photography also forced me to see and acknowledge and love the parts of me i was taught not to love about myself; that’s the reason I do the work I do. And of course also its deemed controversial when I first started doing it because you’re not supposed to show your ass on social media and all these other things especially if you don’t have a perfect body and obviously a lot of people would ask, “why are you doing this?” and I would say look its not for attention, its not even a sexual thing for me; when I do nude work, sex is the last thing on my mind. Like I said right now, it’s still me forcing myself to love it, and I’m hoping over time, it will turn into a completely natural love. I’ve come a long way you know. I’ve come to a point where now I’m somewhat comfortable leaving my house in only a blazer and underwear. It's not about seeking attention, it’s like “here’s the body, see the body”. Its skinny as hell, but I’m working it. So it’s also about body positivity a lot of what I’m doing.
Why is it important to be yourself?
Survival.
We always speak about queerness being written out of history, Black history being written out of history, so what is being done by us? For example, in the coloured community, we had to adopt and aspire to whiteness in order to survive, it was a really toxic thing, but if you wanted to make a decent living, you needed to have lighter skin and straighter hair and speak in a certain way. So this is why the coloured community in Cape Town doesn’t have all of its history because we had to become other people for survival and because we’ve been doing it for so long, we’ve forgotten who we were. And if you don’t know where you come from, you can be molded into something else, for the benefit of someone else. For me, I feel like the coloured community is being used in the same ways as during apartheid, we are still being positioned in the same ways. We are pretty much pawns and it's weird because if today you aspire for whiteness, its a negative thing, and if you’re existing in your culture, that’s a negative as well, so where do you exist as a coloured person? You can’t be true to yourself because its not aspirational, you can’t be what people tell you is aspirational because then you’re selling out. So there's always this strong divide between the posh coloured and Gham coloureds; its a split in the community. And even the identity of coloured itself was meant to split the Black community. So there are many splits, and if you look at the Cape Flats, it's a mess and there’s no connectedness. We’ve lost connection to our ancestors, to our history, to where we come from, our traditions, what we used to eat, what we used to do to connect to the spiritual realm- all of that is gone. So why is it important to be who you are? For survival, otherwise you will be written out of history.
You need to practice who you are everyday. And especially for me coming from a coloured background even though I identify as Black, which can get me into trouble sometimes, but I do identify as Black because coloured people are Black people; the coloured identity didn’t exist until white people created coloured. So especially for me, coming from a coloured background, I feel like I’m in a position to write a history, maybe I’ve forgotten my history, but I can write a new history. And the history that I’m writing is from a coloured perspective, yes, but also an African perspective as well and from a queer perspective. And that’s another history that has been written out of African history, is queer history. Africa used to have a really colorful, beautiful, broad, extensive queer history that was just got forgotten about. Queerness was in some cases celebrated, and in others not acknowledged, but not acknowledged because it wasn’t a thing or a spectacle some of the time. There’s an article I am reading and it documents 39 African countries and the queer history of those places, that helped me a lot in regards of learning our histories.
You need to be who you are for survival. Survival is passing on. The reason we pass on stories and experiences is so that the next generation can grow. I also feel like people from my old community are stagnant because all they know how to do is survive. There’s no tradition. For me growing up, there was no tradition, tradition was going to church for Christmas and Easter, basically Christian traditions due to colonialism. But if you took away the religion, what did we actually have? We didn’t have that. And there is a movement now where people are trying to reconnect to where we actually came from outside of a colonial context. But yeah, that’s why it's important to be yourself. It's not about me and “oh I’m going to do me, this is my voice, this is my life” its partly that, and that valid, but it's also literally for the survival for people like you- people that look like you, that do like you, that sound like you, that feel like you, that’s why need to be ourselves, we need to be seen as ourselves. And as much as we show ourselves to other people, we also need to be comfortable looking in the mirror, and a lot of the time, that’s very difficult. Sometimes it's not about the clothes you wear, but hating the body you’re in or not identifying with the body that you’re in, and not feeling like you can do anything about it. For example if you’re a trans person, if you’re not identifying with your body, but the opposite body, but because of the house you’re living in, the community you live in, you can’t do anything about it because that is going to threaten your safety. So you’re just trapped in this world in this body you can’t do shit about and you hate it every single day and you wish you weren’t you, and the only way to get out of that is to try for self love. So that’s why I choose myself, so people like me can be remembered.