I Collect Gingers

Megan and myself are ginger #97 and #98 of Anthea Pokroy's I Collect Gingers art exhibition. 

Anthea has been photographing gingers since 2010 and now, two and a half years and 500+ gingers later, the red-headed Johannesburg-based artist and photographer will be presenting her debut solo exhibition at Speke Photographic / CIRCA on Jellicoe in Rosebank, Johannesburg tonight.

Pokroy explains, “It was only after my first photography session with seven ‘gingers’ that I began exploring the innate sense of community and collective experience that emerged from the otherness of the ‘gingers’ ”. Through her photographs Pokroy begins to construct a narrative, history/future and system of classification around this self-identified ‘race’. Pokroy uses this minority (2% of the world population) and mythical (historically considered witches and demons) group of red-headed people to highlight the obscurities of racial classification and discrimination which remain prevalent in South Africa. In a context that has historically been obsessed and oppressed by skin colour, Pokroy suggests an ironic alternative to genetic and pigment-based racial profiling. She begins to imagine what a ginger utopia might look like and what its implications would be.

Pokroy has documented gingers from all over South Africa, as well as internationally when she attended the Redhead Day in the Netherlands where thousands of gingers from all over the world congregated. ‘I collect gingers’, has received a plausible amount of interest in the media, including 5fm, 702 Talk Radio, The Star, Wanted Magazine, and Fair Lady amongst others. The artwork also has an impressive local and international social media following.
  
The exhibition opens on 17 January 2013 at CIRCA on Jellicoe. 

The show will run until 2 March 2013.