During this residency Mozambican artist Yuck Miranda started the research on queer figures from pre-colonial and post-colonial Mozambique who migrated to work in the mines of South Africa in the post-independence period.

According to some anthropologists and scholars, this community came with pre-existing «homosexual practices» and homoaffective marriages performed within the South African mines, also considered «miner marriages». A commission of enquiry was set up, responsible for controlling «unnatural vices» or rather these queer figures who came to work in the mines.
Many Mozambicans have at least one family member who had lived and worked in South Africa, including fathers who had worked in the Johannesburg mines. This is not surprising, given that this strand of male migration had been a defining feature of southern Mozambique's social history for most of the twentieth century.
It is also known that the 'mine camps' that housed African workers, from Mozambique and other countries, were notorious theatres for what the colonial authorities called 'unnatural vice' - that is, various forms of same-sex relationships.
Considering the prominent place that migration to the Johannesburg mines has had in national historiography, public memory and Mozambican culture, Yuck Miranda questions in the Showing why the queer dimensions of this history continue to be completely ignored in the country.

Duration: Ca. 90 Min.

Artists in Residence

Registration: buero@kaserne-basel.ch 
Meeting point: Kasernenhof 8 (entrance courtyard side kHaus)

In order to enable accessibility for deaf people at our showings, we try out various possibilities that suit the respective showing format: Subtitling, handouts etc.

Due to the nature of the showings, we will only decide at short notice how access will be guaranteed. Please contact Julia for more information: j.ritter@kaserne-basel.ch