DEAN HUTTON, “If you assume you are something hated, you will make the revolution”
“If you assume you are something hated, you will make the revolution”
From a lonely child without resources, to a renowned South African photojournalist. We talk with queer artist Dean Hutton.
A fat and golden being appears naked in the middle of a suburb in Ghana. Barely moves, but it’s alive. Has short and curly hair. Wears glasses. Angels don’t wear glasses. Neither they have these enormous breasts. People start to surround the creature, they jostle each other to take pictures and videos with their mobile phones. They look into the crotch, until somebody asks: “Are you a man or a woman?”
It is Dean Hutton, and loves this question. “Normally I answer that I’m both and neither. Also I like to see how they treat me according to my answers, because it changes.”
“I believe that new generations are growing exponentially queer from birth.”
Dean Hutton is a renowned South African photojournalist currently dedicated to social art and performance art in the streets. At his 40 years old started to study Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town and lives surrounded by youngsters. Claims to bare witness of a great social and political change in his country, the emergence of a new paradigm propitiated by the most oppressed: black women, students, misfits or simply those who are out of the norm.
If Dean uses his own body to think and express himself, it’s because every inch of his life has been a merciless war. Dean was born white in the Apartheid against black population. Born as a woman that doesn’t feel like one, in a country that gives corrective rape to "cure lesbianism".
Escape
Johannesburg, 1976. Our main character is born as a girl the same year of one of the bloodiest events in the history of South Africa. A student protest march from Soweto, the suburb where the black people from Johannesburg were confined, is marching down the streets. They oppose to a new law that pretended that there, amidst overcrowded and precarious schools for blacks, the language of white settlers was mandatory to be taught, Afrikaans.
The protesters threw stones against police, agents responded by shooting. 566 kids died.
Dean Hutton, before becoming Dean Hutton, grew within a large family: “Many of my relatives were unemployed, had no education. They were conservative and very racist.” Although “I lacked the vocabulary to express it,” felt that such hatred was wrong. Hated the hate towards blacks.
Since 1948, white minority imposed a system of racial segregation in South Africa called Apartheid (“separation” in Afrikaans). Afrikaners, descendants from Dutch and British settlers, installed a racial regime where black population couldn’t vote or hold positions of power, where mixed relations were prohibited, ambulances, schools and even banks corresponded to the color of the skin.
She already knew what was going on in her country. It was impossible not to find out. Simultaneously, she was a minority in her own home, it was hostile territory. “I wasn’t racist and that turned me into an outsider in my own family, it was as if I had a disease.”
I was not racist and that turned me into an outsider in my own family, it was as if I had a disease
At the age of 16 she run away from home. After spending some time staying with an aunt, she wanted to find a “safe home.” In her mind, this idea could only take place in a residence for abandoned children. And not any residency. This South African girl wanted to live in a multiracial shelter. “By then it was pretty hard to find a place that allowed white and black people to mingle, but I found a place. There I blossomed.”
When few days remained for her 18th birthday, did not know if she could vote in the first democratic general elections. Nelson Mandela was the first black candidate for presidency of her country. His victory, with 62% of all casted votes, was overwhelming.
It was 1994 and the Apartheid was coming to its end. At least officially. “Being able to vote was fantastic. Although I grew with all the privileges of my white skin, I felt imprisoned. Never felt free”
Photography, an exercise of power
When you look at someone your brain forms an image of that person automatically. Nevertheless, when you photograph someone, you’re creating a representation, you are exercising power. To place the camera in a low angle will make them look powerful; to press the shutter when they sneeze, will make them look sick or drunk.
The queer artist studied photography. Tirelessly documenting Johannesburg’s streets, and bit by bit the interest towards social subjects developed. Her talent took her to become photographer-in-chief of one of the most popular newspapers of her country, the Mail & Guardian. But professional success, awards, recognition and exhibitions weren’t clearing two awkward thoughts from her mind:
She realized that photojournalism could be another way of imposing identities to people. And that was, exactly, what others did to her
1. “What meant being black in a democratic country?” Nelson Mandela was president and she documented misery and injustice.
2. Neither she felt free, not yet. “I did not feel good with my feminine identity, I did not feel good with any identity”.
Camera in hand, realized that photojournalism could be another way of imposing identities to people. “Photography can be an exploitative activity.” And that was, exactly, what others did to her. “I didn’t like those jobs where people don’t know how they will be portrayed at the end. I started to document a community only if I could establish a true collaboration with it”.
At that period she questioned her privileges as a white photographer in a country where inequality was at extreme rates. At the same time, her identity as a woman was going down the drain.
In 2011, with more than 30 years, she traveled to New York and changed her life. “I knew a community of people of non-binary genders, they identified as queer transexuals. They didn’t feel obliged to choose one of the two options.” A new manner of expressing her discomfort was found, she knew exactly what was the difference between her mother and sisters: “I was so fucking queer.”
Invisible skin
All of the sudden she changed her name to Dean and his life picked up speed. Choosing wasn’t mandatory. Actually. Nothing was. A newfound freedom had changed perception of the world: now I know that human lives are constricted by fears and breakable rules.
Dean assures that the pain from his identity conflict made a better understanding of racism in his country. But unlike sex or gender, skin can’t be rejected, one cannot escape from it.
As Dean could not deny his white privileges, he wanted to do something with them. “White people like to say they’re African, but we spilled a lot of blood there. Each small piece of land has been stolen. If we admit that it is history, we can’t continue to inherit these privileges.”
According to Dean, white people are in debt with black people and they have to work to heal the country. Nevertheless, he rejects feeling guilt.
According to Dean, whites are in debt with black population and must work to heal the country. Nevertheless, he rejects feeling guilt: “Is an emotion that paralyzes, and focuses the attention on yourself. It just can’t be anymore that in this country people still own other people. It sickens me to see how far this keeps going on in South Africa.
The Rainbow Nation is to South Africa what the American dream is to the United States. A foundational ideal, a concept of consensus thought to unite the distinct communities that make these countries. Many South Africans still believe in it. Dean doesn’t.
“It is an idea conceived from public relations. Created by the same person that helped Mandela to write A ‘Long Way To Freedom.’ An unattainable utopia for each of us. Of course we are all the same to the law, but we know that rich people are more equal. The property of the land by white people will always be a privilege. The conversation is other. People want fairness”.
Fascinated by his new life. Dean abandoned progressively the carreer as a photojournalist and approximated to art and activism on the streets. He feels like a warrior and a human shield. Believes that gender destruction has the power of a black hole: absorbing routines, structures, and spiting new ways of relating, living, and why not, political and social organization.
Believes that gender destruction has the power of a black hole: absorbing routines, structures, and spiting new forms of relating, living, and why not, social and political organization
“I don’t believe that representative democracy is working for the poor. We need to find new ways of social organization. I’m not talking about socialism because I don’t believe in binary political systems. Somehow it’s about to make the world become queer without the need of everyone feeling identified with it”.
Currently, Dean deals with a new form called “radical sharing”. Subsisting with more difficulties, but feeling totally devoted to a sort of mission: “We are witnessing the explosion of a system, I perceive it every day. The time to cooperate is now over and governments will militarize. It’s unsustainable not being committed with something. And we don’t have many more opportunities to change it”.
Smartphone politics
A few days ago, the Democratic Alliance, an anti-apartheid party represented traditionally by white people, won the regional elections in South Africa. Jacob Zuma, current president of the country and heir of Mandela’s ANC party, has suffered the worst electoral result in their history.
Zuma has not only paid with votes the corruption in his political party, also a group of women bothered to remember to the public opinion an accusation of rape for which he was tried and absolved in 2006, in the same manner his null efforts to improve women's life conditions, specifically, a powerful rape-culture that persists across the country.
“You will lose the chance to have a good name and get married,” told the president to a group of South African journalists that were covering the electoral journey. Zuma’s male chauvinist comments had already been recognized as political errors and a woman who claims being one of his victims, Kwezi, lives outside the country.
Last weekend, four women stormed into a Zuma speech with posters that reminded, “#RememberKwezi". Several security agents took them away and Twitter started to boil. That day they celebrated, also, women’s day.
“It’s incredible to be in this country right now. Students, black women, feminists, and the queer world are uniting. They don’t longer expect to get attention from the government, they act and collaborate spontaneously, as it’s happening with BlackLivesMatter movement. We are bursting into the political arena.”
Some blame young millennials, the Born Free Generation (born after the apartheid) to be the least political generation in history. Dean dissents. “I’m in a campus and I see they’re more political than any middle-aged person. It’s only that representative democracy is not the main subject, many others are. I believe new generations are growing exponentially, queer by birth.”
Many believe that queer movement is an intimate revolution, relatively comfortable. Dean Hutton gets naked in the street, exposes himself with courage to social rejection because of his looks and ideas. As a prophet with the body of a Venus from the paleolithic era, the Venus of Willendorf, that faceless statuette of a voluptuous body dating 22.000 years old. “To assume that you are something they hate is the most brave thing to do. This is how you will make the revolution.”
