Visual artist working mainly in photography & paint on paper. Activist.
Notable work
interseXion, Robert. A Queer and Crooked Memoir 2021
Awards
Houston Centre for Photography Fellowship (The Binary Farm), SA Kanna nomination Award (“when you feeling like a lady)
Robert A. Hamblin (born 1969) is a South African-born visual artist, working mainly in photography and paint on paper. The work deals with tensions on the gender and sexuality spectrums of the contemporary human condition. InterseXion, a multidisciplinary exhibition and seven year collaboration with the Sistaaz Hood, a group of South African transgender sex workers, was staged at Iziko South African National Gallery in 2017. His autobiography was published in June 2021.[1]
Robert A. Hamblin was born in Hillbrow, Johannesburg in 1969, and assigned female at birth. Discomforts with gender permeated his fine art work from very early and became a key subject by the time he transitioned from female to male in his thirties.
He completed High School in Alberton, Gauteng Province (Johannesburg region) in 1986, working as a freelance darkroom assistant and photographer for the final two years of his schooling.
After completing high school, he worked as a commercial photographer in the theatre and performing arts fields. These platforms informed the working style of his fine art work, and shows clearly in his first publicly exhibited body of work, Millennium Man in 1998. Actors and sets were used to reflect narratives wherein gender identity was probed and became the visual narrative wherein Hamblin continued to work in the two decades that followed.
In 2006 in his mid-thirties, Hamblin started his gender transition from female to male. Subsequently in 2007, he helped found the African organization Gender DynamiX,[2] an organization concerned with the rights of trans people, holding the position of Deputy Director responsible for Advocacy and media liaison from 2009 - 2011.[3]
Today, he continues both his art work and activism which have lead up to the release of his autobiography in June 2021. During the first lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hamblin started painting self-portraits which have been exhibited in Cape Town and Johannesburg.[4]
Hamblin was a keen photographer from an early age. He bought his first camera and darkroom equipment by photographing male athletes at school and selling the photos to their teenage fans. He began his commercial career as a newspaper editorial photographer for South African newspapers Beeld, Die Transvaler and Rapport from 1987 to 1991. In his early twenties he started his freelance work as a photographer in the theatre, television and editorial media where he worked from 1991 – 2009. Concurrently he developed multiple fine art bodies of photography works which were exhibited internationally and at South African galleries and art festivals.
Millennium Man[5] was his first public exhibition at an arts festival, taking a closer look at men and perceived notions of masculinity in an increasingly 'feminised’ world. Two decades later his last body of photographic work, interseXion, was a collaboration with black transgender sex workers which took seven years to produce, culminating in a solo exhibition at The Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town.[6] His latest exhibition is
Hamblin has no formal art training or tertiary education other than twenty years of mentorship with 1953 Académie Ranson abstract painter Nel Erasmus. His art work focuses on issues of queer masculinity as a transgender person and he has exhibited both in South Africa and internationally.
Hamblin published his autobiography Robert: A Queer and Crooked Memoir for the Not So Straight and Narrow ( ISBN9781928420972; Epub ISBN9781928420989) in June 2021, through NB Publishers and Melinda Ferguson Books. Hs latest exhibition is I Just Told the Stars Who I Am at the 99 Loop Gallery.[7]
Hamblin's art and life as a trans person has persistently responded to gender identity. From 2007 to 2009 he was instrumental in the founding of the African organisation Gender DynamiX holding the position of Deputy Director responsible for Advocacy and media liaison from 2009 to 2011. He has been an avid defender, activist and advocate for the rights of transgender persons, using his own experiences to lend visibility to the struggle. “If you understand gender, you will understand that pronouns are a way of giving someone humanity. And when you misgender someone, you take away their humanity. To learn is not a comfortable thing. It's painful, because you're redirecting your neural pathways. It's all about working towards kindness.”
After his work at Gender DynamiX he was a co-founder of a support group for transgendered sex-workers at a Cape Town non-profit organisation SWEAT. During this time he developed his interest in gender theory within the context of sex workers' rights.[8]
Iranti [9](transgender and lesbian focus) Board Chairperson 2019 - 2021
Iranti (transgender and lesbian focus) board member 2016 - 2020.
The Sistaaz Hood Support Group for Transgender women sex workers. Founder member, volunteer consultant Sex Worker Education Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT): 2011-2020.