A literary salon with Jordache A. Ellapen
28 June 2026, 6.30-8.30p.m.
Roundtable Books, Brixton
POSTPONED TO SUNDAY 28 JUNE
FREE, please register
We are hosting Jordache A. Ellapen and his new book Indenture Aesthetics, for a special London discussion on feminist, queer, and gender-non conforming Afro-Indian and black South African artists, with a focus on photographic art.
We’ll be thinking about the history of indentureship in South Africa, and the erasure of indentureship’s relevance to the post-apartheid state.
This is a crucial intervention into the ways in which we understand race, vulnerability, and queerness. We’ll explore ideas of black consciousness, archival history, the history of apartheid South Africa, labour migration, and reading artworks from different communities as a form of solidarity.
The event will feature a live reading from Indenture Aesthetics by Jordache, a discussion followed by a short reading from Azad’s new poetic work in progress (inspired by Indenture Aesthetics) and audience Q and A.
Indenture Aesthetics examines the visual and performance art practices of feminist, queer, femme, and gender-nonconforming Afro-Indian and South African black artists to understand the paradoxes of freedom in contemporary South Africa.
Tracing the afterlife of apartheid-era racial categories and revisiting Bantu Stephen Biko’s Black Consciousness, Ellapen theorizes South African blackness through the Indian Ocean World, showing how the development of an Afro-Indian identity after generations of indentured labor and segregation troubles persistent racial hierarchies.