This research is part of the Co-Creation for Inclusive Knowledges Lab
Helenard Louw, an intersectional feminist researcher and scholar in the Social Sciences. My research interests are grounded in the field of men and masculinities, interpersonal and intimate partner violence, and disability studies. The PhD project that I focus on explores the narratives of Coloured men who acquired a spinal cord injury through interpersonal violence, in which meanings of manhood and interpersonal violence emerges. The heart of the work that I do, creatively, is in challenging and eradicate deficient social representations of race, disability, and Coloured masculinities in South Africa.
As part of the PhD research project, I used a Participatory Action Research methodology to explore ways of addressing interpersonal violence in predominantly violent communities among 32 gangsters (co-researchers/co-curators), who violently acquired a spinal cord injury (SCI) through gang-related activities, in Cape Town, South Africa. The co-researchers in the study, created a collection of photo-stories that depicts the causes and consequences of gang-related violence. The photo-stories not only illustrates significant identity reconfiguration and transformation post-injury, but also proposes ways of mobilising interpersonal violence in their ‘dangerous’ communities. The exhibition that will be held in 2025, will be integral to the legacy of violence in marginalized communities that still hold long-rooted socioeconomic and political consequences of the apartheid era.
The exhibition will be co-curated with the co-researchers, the primary researcher (myself) and a professional curator, which intends on expanding on the possibilities of photo-voice as a collaboration of co-knowledge production and dissemination. This work not only show the extent of profundity in the realities of black, working-class, disabled men who were perpetrators of violence themselves and now victims, but it also shows the extent that this mode of dissemination may have fostering (new) collaborations between stakeholders and organizations.
The exhibition will be held in 2025, in Cape Town, South Africa, and the event will be curated with speeches from the co-researchers/co-curators, community leaders, and entertainment from a local choir. The intention is to create social awareness on violence and to form stronger relations between various organizations and stakeholders on anti-violence work. At the core of the exhibition is a poignant viewing of (in)visible violence and its lasting impacts. This is important in (re)imagining a safer world; one for women and children, disabled, black, queer, and femme bodies. Thus, the exhibition is rooted in community engagement, collaboration, empowerment, agency, mobilization, peace-making, and anti-violence justice in marginalised communities.
