Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi

Polyptych from froZen (Rituals of Becoming) (2016)

Photographic print

Close Looking: Queer African Art and Action

Visual description:

Four photographic images are arranged in a horizontal sequence. In each, the performance artist Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (also known as “crazinisT artisT”) sits in profile, facing left, in a studio space.

They are seated on a stool draped in black cloth, holding a small hand mirror while applying makeup at a simple wooden dressing table. A second mirror rests on the table. The background is composed of deep red fabric, interrupted by a narrow vertical white line.

Across the sequence, the artist’s body is partially obscured, and conventional markers of biological sex are not clearly visible. Each image captures a slightly different moment: the head tilts back as lipstick is applied; foundation is layered across the face, partially obscuring it; and finally, the head lifts upright again as lipstick is reapplied. The sequence creates a subtle rhythm of repetition and variation.

Context:

These images are drawn from Fiatsi’s larger performance project froZen (Rituals of Becoming), which also exists as a video work. In the full performance, the artist moves through a series of intimate acts—grooming, washing, and dressing—through which a body that may initially be read as “male” is gradually transformed into a femme presence.

The photographic stills isolate moments from this process, bringing viewers into what is usually considered private. Gender is not presented here as fixed, but as something actively constructed over time.

Interpretation:

The work invites us to witness gender as a process of becoming. As drag artist RuPaul has observed, “We are all born naked. Everything else is drag.” Fiatsi’s work echoes this idea, showing how femininity is carefully assembled through gesture, material, and attention.

Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep described rites of passage as unfolding in three stages: separation, transformation, and return. froZen appears to dwell in this middle stage—the liminal space in which identity is unsettled and remade. Here, that transformation is made visible: what is usually hidden becomes the focus.

The title froZen suggests both stillness and interruption—a moment in which perception is paused. The emphasized “Z” may also gesture toward forms of identity that move beyond conventional binaries.

The visual elements—red fabric, black cloth, and flashes of white—carry a sense of ritual intensity. These colors may evoke states of transition, mourning, or ancestral presence. In this sense, the work can be understood as a kind of passage, in which an earlier identity recedes and another begins to emerge. Rather than presenting a completed transformation, the work holds us within the process itself.

Reflect and Explore

• What do you notice first when you look at this sequence? How does your attention move across the four images?

• The first and last images both show the artist applying lipstick, while the middle images focus on foundation. What effect does this symmetry create?

• Mirrors appear throughout the work. What role do they play? What does it mean to look at oneself while being looked at?

• The artist’s body is partially obscured. How does this affect the way you read gender in the images?

• What might the red, black, and white elements suggest? Do they feel symbolic, emotional, or something else?

• These images capture a private process. How does it feel to witness this moment? What questions does that raise for you?

  
  

Learn more

• RuPaul, “We’re all born naked, and the rest is drag.”

• Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (1909)

• Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, froZen (Rituals of Becoming) (2016), video documentation

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