Red Couch

Red Couch is inspired by the couch at my mom’s house in Cape Town. This couch has been in my life for years, facilitating nostalgic movie nights and long talks with friends, creating space for people to rest. This couch has been home to anyone without one, from refugees to queer runaways, the Red Couch has been a sanctuary. It is also where I felt safest exploring my understanding of and experimenting with romance and sexuality.

One of the elements created for this project is a large tufted tapestry depicting the couch itself. I wanted to work with textiles and softness,  taking into account and playing with how textile work has always been a, societally labelled, “feminine” medium and method and how its labour intensity is unseen and downplayed.

Beyond this tufted tapestry, Red Couch also consists of a hand-sewed and heat-pressed couch cushion, and a non-linear interview-based film. For the audio-visual element of the project, I interview queer people in my life about their own understandings of queer joy and how those understandings coexist or interact with other elements of their identities. Hearing these experiences, and being in the presence of these amazing people allowed me to rekindle some of my own queer joy. Their laughter became my laughter, their tears flowed into me. My whole understanding of queer joy shifted and came back to me, this elusive joy, made tangible by the care and sharing of others.