Listen to Episode 5 of The ICA Podcast!
Featuring an in-depth interview with Dean Hutton, and including contributions from ICA Director Jay Pather and theatre-maker and performer Warona Seane, as well as questions and responses from audience members in Hutton's live interventions.
Dean Hutton, better known as Goldendean, is a genderqueer trans media artist provoking dialogue about the gaze, queer bodies, love and social justice. They have worked across photojournalism, print, digital, video and social media, performance and community action since the late 1990s. Their strategy of simple, often improvised actions by a “Fat Queer White Trans body” share moments of soft courage to affirm the right of all bodies to exist, to be celebrated and protected.
We trace the trajectory of Hutton’s artistic practice from their early career as a photojournalist at the Mail & Guardian, to their experiments with self-portraiture, the birth of their performance avatar, Goldendean, and the realisation of – and vast range of reactions to – their infamous 2016-2018 work, FuckWhitePeople. Hutton reflects on how, at each turn, their practice has been informed and propelled by their experience of growing up in apartheid South Africa, and of living as a “Fat Queer White Trans body” visibly and vocally resisting hegemonic whiteness.
Goldendean at the launch of the ICA, 2016. Photo by Angel-Ho.
About the ICA Podcast
The ICA Podcast extends the work begun by the ICA’s 2019 publication Acts of Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa – through conversations with the creators and curators of Live Art. Read more about the vision for The ICA Podcast, and the artists featured in Season 1.
Listen and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Podcast Addict, or wherever you find podcasts. You can also listen on our website.
Dean Hutton, Plan B, A Gathering of Strangers (Or) This Is Not Working, 2018. Photo by Xolani Tulumani.
Dean Hutton, #fuckwhitepeople, 2017. Photo by Ashley Walters.
Looking ahead
In Episode 6 we’ll be speaking to visual and performance artist Sikhumbuzo Makandula – join us then!