Fotomuseum Winterthur | Online Events | Wednesday, 05.04.2023, 19:00–20:30
Online Lecture and Discussion: This Is Only a Chorus, Nobody Knows the Entire Song
Rhoda Davids Abel, I flicker in and out of my body, 2020 © Rhoda Davids Abel
As part of the exhibition Adji Dieye – Aphasia, Fotomuseum Winterthur invited students of the new master‘s programme Blacker Blackness at Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, to give an online lecture on imagination, alternative forms of knowledge production and spirituality as artistic methodologies. Blacker Blackness focuses on imagination as a method to uncode and liberate representations of Blackness in art and design. In their online lecture titled This Is Only a Chorus, Nobody Knows the Entire Song, the students Rhoda Davids Abel and Ivna Esajas will examine their individual artistic strategies with various archival material, ranging from audio, drawings and photography to poems and historical documents. By pointing towards forgotten pasts lingering underneath archival imageries, they reflect on how the archive can be used as a construction site in contemporary lens-based practices to reimagine the past, present and future whilst unearthing topics of culture, identity and belonging.
Panelists
Rhoda Davids Abel lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Bern and Cape Town, South Africa. Her artistic practice entails connecting the past to the present through archival research combined with dream symbolism and interpretations through the mediums of movement, poetry and installation.
Ivna Esajas lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her practice is primarily informed by drawing. For the lecture she will focus on reimagining erased (hi)stories based on her experiences in the study programme of Blacker Blackness.
The panel is moderated by Ann Mbuti, a Zurich-based independent writer and art critic in the contemporary arts field with a practice that is informed by her interest in the African diaspora and ways to make art and culture more widely accessible. Her art reviews and essays have been published internationally. Her book Black Artists Now was released in October 2022. Currently, she concentrates on mythologies, oral history and the interplay of fact and fiction.
The event is free, will be held in English and takes place on Zoom. Details on how to access the talk will be confirmed upon registration. Register here.
This event takes place in the framework of the exhibition Adji Dieye – Aphasia. In her artistic practice, Italian-Senegalese artist Adji Dieye (b. 1991) deals with the subjects of postcolonialism and nation-building. The exhibition centres on the video installation Aphasia (2022), which presents a polyphonic language performance by the artist at various locations in Dakar, Senegal. Dieye’s work examines the role that language plays in historiography and the construction of a (national) identity. In doing so, she gives agency and a voice to Afro-diasporic and Senegalese communities by shedding light on the importance of oral storytelling as an alternative knowledge system.
Panelists
Rhoda Davids Abel lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Bern and Cape Town, South Africa. Her artistic practice entails connecting the past to the present through archival research combined with dream symbolism and interpretations through the mediums of movement, poetry and installation.
Ivna Esajas lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her practice is primarily informed by drawing. For the lecture she will focus on reimagining erased (hi)stories based on her experiences in the study programme of Blacker Blackness.
The panel is moderated by Ann Mbuti, a Zurich-based independent writer and art critic in the contemporary arts field with a practice that is informed by her interest in the African diaspora and ways to make art and culture more widely accessible. Her art reviews and essays have been published internationally. Her book Black Artists Now was released in October 2022. Currently, she concentrates on mythologies, oral history and the interplay of fact and fiction.
The event is free, will be held in English and takes place on Zoom. Details on how to access the talk will be confirmed upon registration. Register here.
This event takes place in the framework of the exhibition Adji Dieye – Aphasia. In her artistic practice, Italian-Senegalese artist Adji Dieye (b. 1991) deals with the subjects of postcolonialism and nation-building. The exhibition centres on the video installation Aphasia (2022), which presents a polyphonic language performance by the artist at various locations in Dakar, Senegal. Dieye’s work examines the role that language plays in historiography and the construction of a (national) identity. In doing so, she gives agency and a voice to Afro-diasporic and Senegalese communities by shedding light on the importance of oral storytelling as an alternative knowledge system.