00:00At one point in township culture, having cheese in your sandwich was a sign of privilege.
00:06Enter the term cheese girl.
00:10And she wasn't one of them.
00:13There's no real way to define what a cheese girl is.
00:17But I think that's what makes it interesting, because it opens the term up to more commentary.
00:24And by choice, I've associated and came the term.
00:28Because I see the term as potentiating something that exists beyond suffrage.
00:36Meet Rubone Finger, a multimedia sculpture artist using ceramics to explore black identity, class, and the contradictions of modern South African life.
00:47I grew up in Broomfontein in a rough township by a single mom.
00:54So growing up, I was constantly associated to the term cheese girl.
01:00And it was ironic to me, because I don't think I emulated anything that was quote-unquote cheese girl.
01:06The only thing that I think people may have identified as being cheesy is probably small social indicators like having access to monopoly.
01:17Now as an artist, she's unpacking the many layers of the South African cheese girl through her art.
01:26Oftentimes, blackness is assumed into positions of pain and suffrage.
01:31So when you take a term like that, which was initially used to alineate and use it to re-imagine oneself into opulence,
01:40not just as a way of making opulence an aspiration, but making opulence attainable,
01:46is what I have now imagined cheese girl to be.
01:50What happens when symbols of supposed lack, like chicken feet, are elevated into symbols of glamour?
02:01Food is a central part of my work because it's an indicator of social economic disparities.
02:09And chicken feet, ironically, fall at the bottom of the food hierarchy in the township.
02:13Then the kota is slightly above.
02:16A kota, it's a loaf of bread that is ordinarily stacked with achar, chips, Russian or Vienna, depending on your pocket,
02:24poloni or cheese, depending on your pocket.
02:27And that's the African burger.
02:35I am celebrating blackness beyond struggle.
02:38I think it's very important that, especially in this post-apartheid era,
02:43I think we need to start creating utopic worlds for us to occupy and transition from suffrage,
02:51to leisure, to rest, to abundance, to accessibility and opportunity.
03:03But why ceramics?
03:04What is it about clay that allows Ruboni to communicate her ideas?
03:11The moment you take something like chicken feet and translate it into a medium, like ceramics,
03:17you completely juxtaposition where it sits on the social hierarchy.
03:22So the moment you translate something that falls at the bottom of the hierarchy
03:26into a more expensive material,
03:30you are almost flipping the narrative.
03:34What stories are hidden behind the things we consume?
03:41And why is Instagram aesthetics another area of exploration for Ruboni?
03:48Social media has redefined what black luxury looks like.
03:55Louis Vuittons, as you know, are already a symbol of class.
03:58They are these shoes to wear.
04:01And that sort of luxury is almost inaccessible and unattainable.
04:05So I wanted to re-imagine what the Louis Vuitton would be as an object of black utopia
04:13and how that would look like.
04:15How do we insert ourselves into those spaces?
04:18I thought of chicken feet, which fall at the bottom of the social hierarchy in terms of food.
04:24Ruboni Fingers' work challenges us to see blackness beyond struggle.
04:30This piece is titled Caucus and it mimics a gathering.
04:35Acrylic nails essentially are one of the smaller ways that black women luxuriate in townships.
04:42And with the Cardi B culture that has now taken over with the longer the nails,
04:49the more art you have on your nail actually is a symbol of the social economics that are constantly happening.
04:56My work is about creating a space for blackness in prosperity, opulence, luxury.
05:15So it was very important to step away from the idea of the black diamond as new money
05:20and step into the idea of the black pearl as a preposition for old money, black old money.
05:30So I think of this piece as a symbol of generational wealth.
05:38Ruboni Fingers' work challenges us to see blackness beyond struggle.
05:43It invites us to rethink ideas of success and luxury.
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