Kat’s Nine Lives: Performing Trans Identity/ies in Botswana

A photo essay by John McAllister

Katlego Kolanyane-Kesupile is the first trans person to make herself visible as such in Botswana. She is a performance artist, so if gender itself is a performance, Kat performs both her gender and her art.

But they are not the same performance. According to Judith Butler, we all perform our gender, but the gender performance of trans is necessarily more creative, since it is performed against the grain of societal expectations.

Not every performance of gender is art, not even trans performances. Some simply perform trans. Others rise to the level of art by transforming the performance of trans.

In these photographs, Kat and photographer John McAllister explore some of the paradoxes of trans identity and performativity in nine “trans/formations” that highlight both the artifice and the diversity of gender as invention and as play.

“Freedom,” says Kat, “will come when all Batswana can assume and inhabit whatever gender or other identities they are comfortable with.” Kat’s Nine Lives is intended as a ludic — and playfully provocative — performance of some of the possibilities for transformation that we all possess.

Kat is a Motswana trans artist and performer with a BA in Theatre from the University of the Witwatersrand. A 2016 Chevening Scholar, she is currently completing an MA in Human Rights, Culture and Social Justice at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

John McAllister is a photographer and editor who taught English literature, film, and academic writing at the University of Botswana from 2000 until 2015.

You can see more of Kat’s work on kkolkes.wix.com/kkolkes follow her on Twitter @kkolkes. You can see more of John’s work at endotica.org and follow him on Twitter @mkonommoja.