The Exorcism of Mary Magdalene: A Divine Intervention

The Exorcism of Mary Magdalene: A Divine Intervention

The Exorcism of Mary Magdalene: A Divine Intervention is an exploration of belonging, through a liminal state of placelessness. Through the iconography of Mary Magdalene and their narrative contextualities, I resurrect the archival yet contemporary transgenerational reckonings & beckoning's of disadvantaged poc-queer-femme persons & collectives, in South Africa.

Short film created by Lukhanyiso Skosana.

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Lukhanyiso Skosana is an Award-Winning Inter-disciplinary Artist & Creative Consultant creating whilst consulting through a multiverse of mediums born and bred eGqeberha in the Eastern Cape.

Their performance practice is founded on the Fitzmaurice voice-work,
the Sanskrit system of “rasa”. body mapping, and free-writing, under the guidance of Dr. Sara Matchett and Rehane Abrahams as well as The Mothertongue Project.
Through the use of this embodied practice, a visceral and sensorial style of writing, performance & curation
emerges for all mediums and artistic explications

Lukhanyiso resurrects - (re)imagines -and - (re)calibrates historical pop-culture figures from the their restless tombs, critically fabulating their lives within and throughout time, for the need of understanding
self/collective self.

To travel through and within the bodies, innate archival femme(o)graphy and memory. Whilst framing bodies as archival sites of memory: living, breathing memorial sites that embody a herstory of extreme events, as they contain disturbing remains.

Lukhanyiso is a University of Cape Town graduate with an Advanced Diploma in Theatre (2020)
(and an incomplete BA Honors in Performance, hopefully, to be completed in 2024). As an Institute of Creative Arts Fellow
they debuted “The Exorcism of Mary Magdalene” performative & film collection (2019 - 2022), which also was presented at the Live Art Arcade, National Arts Festival, Turbine Art Fair, US Woordfees and Body Politic. They were selected to be apart of UCT Works Of Arts Collection x ICA “The Fire This Time x Umsebenzi”, where they presented “Untitled” a performative & film installation (2022).

As a Fleur Du Cap Award - Winner for Best Original Musical Score & Performance for Womb of Fire by The Mothertongue Project (2018), they have vocally-composed scores for works like “Isimo” and “Dwala Lam” (2021) by visual artist Sethembile Msezane.

As a Manyano Media Black Girl Live Fellow, they debuted “Qamatha the Mistress of Nazareth” an epic trilogy (2022) which was later presented at the Artscape Theatre Centre ‘New Voices’.
Mkabayi ka Jama in “Isililo sika Nandi” by Zamah Nkonyeni (2021 - 2022) and Rose Maxson “Fences” a stage adaptation by Princess Mokokwe (2021) are some of the many ‘faces’ they have embodied on stage.

2023’s collaborations and partnerships include Open-Television x GirlsInFilm x Glucose Guardians “Home Is A Place You Burn Down”
The Fitzmaurice Voice Institute’s “Lamentations”
and
Koleka Putuma x National Arts Festival present “Theatre of Beauty: Imvuselelo”.

“I am an embodied excavation - (re)fashioning & (re)calibrating through performative aestheticization - (co)fabulating together to infity-queeriosity - & - beyond”

These reckonings & beckoning's have become an ancestral visual montage haunting whilst performatively protesting towards queer futurity.

The Exorcism of Mary Magdalene: A Divine Intervention
  • The Exorcism Of Mary Magdalene: A Divine Intervention

    The Exorcism of Mary Magdalene: A Divine Intervention is an exploration of belonging, through a liminal state of placelessness. Through the iconography of Mary Magdalene and their narrative contextualities, I resurrect the archival yet contemporary transgenerational reckonings & beckoning's of di...