It’s a complicated claim, isn’t it? That imagination may constitute a decolonial activity? Complicated by the fact that imagination cannot stand in for access to necessary material resources. That imagination cannot stand in for centuries of unmitigated loss. But, perhaps, the realm of imagination can be fertile ground for creating a framework for restitution. Perhaps, if we can imagine, collectively, black life that is joy-filled and not only defined by the traumas of racial and colonial violence, this can be the bedrock from which we build a world that loves black people as much as it once loved our subjugation. Perhaps. It is in this realm of perhaps that the work of Mikhailia Petersen sits for me. The realm of imagination that is rooted in material reality and asks the question “perhaps otherwise?”. In Reimagining Themba Petersen collaborated with the Little Lions child coaching program, a Cape Town based organisation with a focus on supporting children in townships through mental health based initiatives. The collaboration held at its centre the fictional, children’s story of Themba: the lion who lost his mane. Themba’s pursuit of his mane takes him on an adventure where he meets many friends who help him discover, mane or not, the qualities he possesses. A testament to the fact that we are made of more than what we perceive of ourselves on the outside. The message in the context of children raised in townships, relics of colonial and apartheid segregation that still deny dignity to an overwhelming amount of South Africans, rings redemptively. Though an aggressively racist society may put you in conditions of precarity, poverty and denigration you are more than the conditions of your outer surroundings. The qualities that you are composed of individually can be harnessed towards communities that prioritise joy, care and communality. Or, if nothing else, we can hold onto that hope and allow that hope to be transmuted into faith, trusting in our innate value and our ability to re-story our supposed shortcomings. Themba is an isiZulu name that means “trust”, “hope”, “faith”. Far from uncommon in South Africa, the ubiquity of the name Themba might speak to the faithfulness, the hopefulness, that exists among South Africans of colour, regardless of the violent conditions exacted upon us. And, in the title of her exhibition, Reimagining Themba, Petersen may gesture towards how we might reimagine this faithfulness, this hope. In her images Petersen appears to celebrate the resplendent spirit of her subjects. Dressed in bespoke, opulent ball gowns and suits designed by Cape Town based designer BLÜNKE, largely oversized on the still developing bodies of the children in the photographs, Petersen’s subjects are displayed in various postures of play and repose. Reminiscent of the celebratory gaudiness of the Kaapse Klopse carnival, these images hold a historical intertextuality that speaks to the history of people of colour in Cape Town, and how these communities through adversity find the cracks that might allow them self-expression. Through imagination Petersen collaborates with her subjects to create images that time-travel to both the past and a possible future. The pictured children in seemingly “adult” costumes of celebration speaks to a kind of intergenerationality. That we inherit these legacies of joy-as-resistance that we are descended from and, at the same time, represent the promise of the continuation and renewal of these communal joy practices. One image, shot from a low-angle from behind, features a child in a pink, iridescent ball gown with the kind of wings on you might imagine at a primary school’s christmas play, which makes me think of musician Devonté Hynes’ (stage name Blood Orange) album Negro Swan. The refrain on Charcoal Baby breathlessly resounding, No one wants to be the odd one out at times No one wants to be the negro swan Can you break sometimes? Can you break sometimes? A refrain that harkens to the fragility of blackness, the potential for dehumanisation via deification or demonization. This fragility carries through Reimagining Themba though, where Hynes’ speaks to the heaviness of the mantle of blackness (Can you break sometimes?), Petersen and her subjects seem to gleefully revel in this fragility. We might be able to call this a fragility in/of representation which both Hynes and Petersen explore with sensitivity, albeit, with different impressions and aims. Petersen’s images speak to the beauteous process of defining one’s own conditions for representation whereas Hynes speaks to the boxes that can be imposed on us from society within that representation. Neither is right or wrong but both offer a delicate impression on the imaginal possibilities and limitations in black representation. The duplicity of being socially represented as both demon and deity depending on the historical moment and the accompanying political mood. In either instance, the pursuit of a representation that allows us to “[reclaim] the right to dream the future” is at the centre. Reimagining Themba doesn’t offer any answers per say to these questions of the representation of people of colour, opting rather to relish in a celebratory imaginal space that foregrounds the joy of its subjects, their spirit of resilience and the generational potentials these may afford. And it is this hopefulness, this faithfulness, that shines through the photographs. A determination to “seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair” as Arundhati Roy writes. To refuse the denial of joy.