Giving Contours to Shadows

Lerato Shadi, Mosaka wa nako, 2014, Performance im Neuen Berliner Kunstverein, 2014 © Neuer Berliner Kunstverein / Jens Ziehe

Entrevista com Bonaventure Ndikung e Marius Babias, directores artísticos de SAVVY Contemporary e n.b.k. respectivamente, a propósito do sue projecto multidisciplinar "Giving Contours to Shadows".

C&: You involved many different cultural players. Rising stars as well as distinguished figures like Simon Njami…

BN: But you might notice that almost all the artists were born after 1970. We wanted to work with artists of a specific generation, with people who didn’t necessarily experience colonialism themselves, but who lived through that immediate turn to the postcolonial era. There’s a fantastic article by Esiaba Irobi entitled “The Problem with Postcolonial Theory,” where he writes that the problem with postcolonial theory is that you only ever see yourself through the eyes of the Other. You never just see yourself. You try to legitimize yourself by means of the Other. But in my opinion, we’ve come so far that we no longer need that. Colonial and postcolonial histories are very important, but they are only an aspect of the history of the non-West. My generation needs new narratives, new entry points into precolonial history, colonial history, and our present time. We need to reread and reinterpret the writings of Cheikh Anta Diop and Martin Bernal. We need to situate the political and cultural positions of intellectual pioneers such as Léopold Sedar Senghor, Jomo Kenyatta, Aimé Césaire, orMongo Beti in the context of our own time. We need to internalize the theories and philosophies of Glissant, Trouillot, and Walcott, and learn from curators like Njami andEnwezor.

Leiam a entrevista na íntegra.