Stitches of power. Stitches of sorrow
Nikolai Kunsthalle Copenhagen
New Shelter plan Copenhagen
Volksbühne Berlin
Framer Framed Amsterdam
Frascati Amsterdam
It starts with the clicking sound of a gun being loaded, complete silence, then the gun again, followed by Angela Davis’ voice. This fragment of Davis functions as a voice over to a short clip of a black Dahomey woman climbing out of a well. While the fragment plays the clip is repeated in a continuous loop, the clicking sound of the gun marking the moment when the woman climbs out of the well and has to start all over again. In one corner the artist, is embroidering a gun. In another, the audience is participating in a larger embroidery, of what they do not yet know.
Nikolay Kunsthalle Copenhagen- Fashion academy Dakar -New shelter plan Copenhagen -Framer Framed Amsterdam- Frascati Amsterdam- Van Abbe museum Eindhoven- IFA Gallery Berlin- Autograph London- Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin
Upon first encountering all these parts of the performance they seem separate, and in their separateness a bit overwhelming but, with further investigation the viewer understands that everything is interrelated. Not just as pieces of this performance, but because the performance blurs the lines between performer and audience, past and present, here and there. The performance therewith makes a case for relationality of movements and continuity of time. It associates the Dahomey Women warriors who were active along the shores of the African West Coast in the 18th and 19th century, with the US based Black Panther Movement of the 1970s that Angela Davis was affiliated with and the here and now. (see also video registration)
Rethinking Transitional Justice: Dismantling Legacies of Coloniality through the Process of Transitional Injustice
Emilie van Heydoorn & Fleur van der Laan
photography Nikolaj Recke, Miguel Gomez, Jimini Hignett