Safina Said Kimbokota

Safina Said Kimbokota

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Restorative, informative, and loving. These are the qualities that breathe life into the sculptures. Safina’s series works directly against the media’s dissemination of false prejudices that challenge African beauty. Safina confronts and rejects the skin bleaching industry. In this series, she presents restored narratives of African women and their triumph over social pressure and colourism.

Safina reclaims the figurine form to reject harmful beauty standards and instead gives value to natural beauty. Critical to this series is the choice of figurines, as if to reject the influencing power of mannequins. We can immediately sense a wave of resistance, grace, and heritage. The figurines are created with sustainable material and wrapped with various African fabrics (one such fabric is the ‘Kitenge,’ a popular Swahili fabric). Safina’s collages also provide intimate vignettes of labour and land struggles that affect African women across the continent. The power stance in the women of the collage compliment the unapologetic gestures of the figurines.