Transnational Queer-Feminist Methodologies in Live Art: Issues of Translation and Representation in Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi’s Work

Abstract

How to access, read, and interpret queer-feminist live art from a transnational perspective? And how to account for those subjects whose geopolitical positionalities do not subscribe to the most acknowledged Euro-American canons? In this article, I will address these questions by engaging with the limits of a queer theory (or practice) that does not acknowledge its feminist co-constitution or that it is anchored to Anglo-American perspectives and genealogies. I will then propose a transnational approach to enrich this field and counteract the reproduction of abstract queer equivalences across cultures. Adopting what I call a ‘transnational queer-feminist methodology’ will therefore be essential for working with and analysing queer and queer-feminist live art that is produced and circulated across and within diverse geopolitical locations. I will describe how the latter relies on an interdisciplinary weaving of social sciences, queer, and performance studies/practices. I will use this approach in analysing Ghanaian transgender artist Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [crazinisT artisT], unpacking the issues of cultural and linguistic translation in her work. The artist (who asks to be called with the pronouns ’sHit’ or ‘she’) engages in endurance actions that, together with challenging her own physical boundaries, also expose the limits of Western identity markers. In applying a transnational queer-feminist methodology that expands from the regional (Ghana) towards transnational Pan-African perspectives, I will then argue that her work uses the aesthetics of abjection to counteract cultural and linguistic imperialisms and become ‘illegible’ to the neo-liberal global LGBT rights formulations whilst speaking for a transversal queer African subjectivity.