Not Going it Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating

The catalogue of the 13th edition of the Rencontres de Bamako - African Biennale of Photography, focusing on multiplicity, difference, becoming, and heritage.

The dominant narrative in this "globalized world" is, incidentally, that of singularity—of universalism, of single identities, of singular cultures, of insular political systems. With this narrative, however, comes an illusory sense of stability and stasis; identities seem inalterable, cultures are immutable, political systems prove uneasy in the face of change. Thus, in sustaining this pervasive discourse, there has been a great loss of multiplicity, of fragmentation, of process and change, and not least of complex notions of humanity and equally complex narratives.

In decentering this year's biennale On Multiplicity, Difference, Becoming, and Heritage, General Director Cheick Diallo, Artistic Director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, and the curatorial team—Akinbode Akinbiyi (artist and independent curator), Meriem Berrada (Artistic Director, MACAAL, Marrakech), Tandazani Dhlakama (Assistant Curator, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa), and Liz Ikiriko (artist and Assistant Curator, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto)—of the Bamako Encounters pay a powerful tribute to the spaces in between, to that which defies definition, to phases of transition, to being this and that or neither and both, to becoming, and to difference and divergence in all their shades. Accordingly, Amadou Hampâté Bâ's statement (Aspects de la civilisation africaine, Éditions Présence Africaine, 1972) presiding over the manifestation, Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono,translates to, "the persons of the person are multiple in the person."

A key tool for negotiating the processual and shifting nature of multiplicity lies in storytelling. It is the central medium through which humanity points the lens on itself and launches an attempt at self-understanding and reflection, and the breadth of answers given throughout history testifies to the congenial nature of storytelling and multiplicity. Moreover, the stories we tell not only negotiate who we are but also expose underlying currents of who we will become in the future. This is the concern lying at the heart of the 13th edition of the Bamako Encounters—the stories we tell, the multiple facets of humanity we accommodate, notions of processuality, becoming in being, embracing identities that are layered, fragmented, and divergent, and the multifarious ways of being in the world, whether enacted or imagined. It should be emphasized that this does not apply only to questions of personal identity. On the contrary, it is a bold affirmation of transformation and transition, of becoming in an emphatic sense, and is thus equally significant for state politics. It also rings true for questions of heritage/patrimony. Embracing the kaleidoscopic legacy of our multiple heritages means to open them up and liberate the term "patrimony" from its etymological roots (the Latin patrimonium means "the heritage of the father"), imagining in its place an inclusive concept of matrimony.

Thus, in this 13th edition of the Bamako Encounters with the title Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono, artists, curators, scholars, activists, and people of all walks of life are invited to reflect collectively on these multiplicities of being and differences, on expanding beyond the notion of a single being, and on embracing compound, layered and fragmented identities as much as layered, complex, non-linear understandings of space(s) and time(s).

Published following the 13th edition of the Rencontres de Bamako - African Biennale of Photography, in Bamako, Mali, in 2022.

With Saïd Afifi, Ixmucané Aguilar, Baff Akoto, Annie-Marie Akussah, Américo Hunguana, Daoud Aoulad-Syad, Leo Asemota, Myriam Omar Awadi, Salih Basheer, Shiraz Bayjoo, Amina Benbouchta, Hakim Benchekroun, Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, Rehema Chachage, Ulier Costa-Santos, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Fatoumata Diabaté, Aicha Diallo, Amsatou Diallo, Anna Binta Diallo, Mélissa Oummou Diallo, Nene Aïssatou Diallo, Binta Diaw, Adji Dieye, Imane Djamil, Sènami Donoumassou, Abdessamad El Montassir, Fairouz El Tom, Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose, Raisa Galofre, Raisa Galofre, Joy Gregory, Gherdai Hassell, Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo, Letitia Huckaby, Anique Jordan, Gladys Kalechini, Hamedine Kane, Atiyyah Khan, Gulshan Khan, Seif Kousmate, Mohammed Laouli, Maya Louhichi, Mallory Lowe Mpoka, Nourhan Maayouf, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien, Botembe Moseka Maïté, Louisa Marajo, Clarita Maria, Billie McTernan, Mónica de Miranda, Arsène Mpiana Monkwe, Sethembile Msezane, Ebti Nabag, Elijah Ndoumbe, Lucia Nhamo, Samuel Nja Kwa, Nyancho NwaNri, Jo Ractcliffe, Adee Roberson, Fethi Sahraoui, Muhammad Salah, Neville Starling, Eve Tagny, René Tavares, Sackitey Tesa, Helena Uambembe, David Uzochukwu, Sofia Yala, Timothy Yanick Hunter.

A manifesto for the decolonization of art book fairs and publishing.

Can we decolonize art book fairs? Can we decentralize knowledge and deconstruct privilege in our contexts? Decolonizing Art Book Fairs aims to rethink through the existing and speculative frameworks of organizational practice in the art book fairs. This workbook attempts to introduce new narratives and help deconstruct the frontiers between north(s) and south(s), putting an emphasis on practitioners and initiatives from the African continent and diaspora. A workbook with (primarily newly commissioned) texts and interviews.

Contributions by Jean-Claude Awono, Yaiza Camps, Chayet Chiénin, Chimurenga, Renata Felinto, Wanjeri Gakuru, Moritz Grünke, Aryan Kaganof, Sharlene Khan, Grada Kilomba, Carla Lever, Fouad Asfour, Dzekashu MacViban, Gladys Mendía, James Murua, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Simon Njami, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Monica Nkodo, O Menelick 2Ato, Pascale Obolo, Michalis Pichler, Mario Pissarra, Sergio Raimundo, Djimeli Raoul, Flurina Rothenberger, Bienvenu Sene, Bisi Silva, Kwanele Sosibo, Parfait Tabapsi, Louise Umutoni, Zamân Books & Curating.

Art is slow attention. 

With Contributions from: Rosana Paulino, City Report São Paulo, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Bruno Baptistelli, Françoise Schein, Anna Maria Maiolino, Rubem Valentim, Els Opsomer, Elen Braga, Julien Creuzet and Lieven De Boeck. 

Guest Editor: Jota Mombaça 

GLEAN is a Brussels-based magazine for contemporary art with quarterly publications in both English and Dutch.

THE MOON IS READING US A BOOK is the debut collection of poetry from a writer who displays a wide-ranging palette for storytelling and folklore in a suite of narrative poems. The collection is built around an ensemble of characters that range from known to unknown, through which Serubiri crafts visually-inspired poems that combine the photographic, the intensely personal, and the scholarly. In his book, he manages to domesticate larger-than-life figures, including Zanzibari-born singer-songwriter Freddie Mercury and Nigerian-born photographer Rotimi Fani Kayode. Simultaneously pondered and elastic, Serubiri’s poetry lures these figures – and the reader – into an atmosphere that is only as expansive as the interior landscapes he delineates with each succeeding poem. With this he expresses his own doubts and path, from memories of his native Uganda to New York City, through a psychology of decisions and life choices. 

Serubiri Moses is a Ugandan curator and author based in New York City. He currently serves as faculty in Art History at Hunter College and visiting faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. He previously held positions at New York University and the New Centre for Research and Practice, and delivered lectures at Williams College, Yale University, University of Pittsburgh, The New School, basis voor aktuelle kunst, and University of the Arts Helsinki. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions at museums including MoMA PS1, New York; Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; and the Hessel Museum, Bard College, NY. He previously held a research fellowship at the University of Bayreuth; received his MA in Curatorial Studies at Bard College; and is an alumni of the Àsìkò International Art Programme. He serves on the editorial team of e-flux journal. He has published poetry in the online journals Jalada and Badilisha Poetry Exchange, as well as in print in journals Kwani? 7, Kwani? 8, and READ: A Journal of Inter-Translation (2022). His poetry has been reviewed online in The New Inquiry. THE MOON IS READING US A BOOK is his first book of poetry. 

Poets Audre Lorde and Pat Parker first met in 1969; they began exchanging letters regularly five years later. Over the next fifteen years, Lorde and Parker shared ideas, advice, and confidence through the mail. They sent each other handwritten and typewritten letters and postcards often with inserted items including articles, money, and videotapes.

The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989 gathers this unique correspondence in which Lorde and Parker discuss their work as writers as well as the intimate details of their lives, including periods when each lived with cancer. These letters are a rare opportunity to glimpse inside the minds and friendship of two great twentieth century poets.

Introduction by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan.

Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple dignity for the Palestinian.

"Dolto’s Dominique is the only case I’ve found that rivals Freud, and brings us up to date, replete with questions of incestuous trauma, repressed sexualities, autism and cognitive disability, and a profound sense for the contradictions of polite society and histories of colonial and racist violence. I love this child and encountering Dolto’s otherworldly voice as an analyst." — Jamieson Webster

While the child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto stands alongside Jacques Lacan as a leading light of the Other French School, she has been little translated and remains curiously unknown in the English-speaking world. First published in 1971, Dominique: The Case of an Adolescent is frank and close to the clinical experience. A masterpiece of the genre, it is at once a granular psychological portrait of a troubled adolescent and his familial inheritance, and a historical case study, set in the France of the 1960s, of the of the relationship between subjectivity, nationality, and time and space.

With a foreword by Michael Ryzner-Basiewicz

Translated by Ivan Kats, revised by Lionel and Sharmini Bailly

Cover image by Mike Kelley, Untitled 1975

Françoise Dolto (born 6 November 1908, Paris) was a psychoanalyst and paediatrician. Alongside private practice at her home, where she saw adults and children, Dolto practised in four institutions where she saw only children patients: the Polyclinique Ney, the Centre Claude Bernard, the Hôpital Trousseau and the Centre Etienne Marcel. From 1967 to 1969, Dolto answered adult and child listeners of the French radio station Europe No. 1, live and anonymously under the name ‘Docteur X’. The programme enjoyed excellent ratings, but Dolto found dialogue to be hindered by the demands of live broadcasting and advertising. In 1976, she agreed to return to radio with Lorsque l’enfant paraît on France Inter, on the condition that she replied to listeners’ letters, which enabled her to go into depth. The programme was a huge success, and would make her a household name. In 1978 Dolto retired as an adult psychoanalyst: her fame had become such that it distorted the therapeutic relationship with patients. She now devoted herself to prevention, training of young analysts, group and individual supervision, publications, conferences and radio and television broadcasts. She also continued her work with children in the care of the Aide Sociale à l’Enfance, some of whom she received at her home until the end of her life. In 1979, along with a small team, she founded the Maison Verte, a place for early-years socialisation welcoming children from ages zero to four along with their caregivers, for sessions of play and talk. This model spread throughout France and Europe, to Russia, Armenia and Latin America. Dolto is the author of more than a dozen books, and several essays, interviews and seminars. In English, her books have been translated as Psychoanalysis and Pediatrics (Routeledge, 2013) and The Unconscious Body Image (Routledge, 2022). Françoise Dolto died on 25 August 1988 in Paris.

"We release this special issue as one collective voice within the call for abolition, transformation, and exit.

Rather than evacuating our consulting rooms and classrooms of politics, we here seek to put the center of the world at the center of psychoanalysis.

All the proceeds of this issue will go to The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, where trying to understand and helping the victims of this ongoing catastrophe go hand-in-hand."

Table of Contents The Editors, "“For Life’s Sake”

Nadia Bou Ali, “Social Hell”

Mary Turfah, “Israel’s Reality Principle”

Adam HajYahia, “The Principle of Return”

Rana Issa, “The Right to Exist”

Nihal El Aasar, “Left-wing Melancholia”

Jake Romm, “Elements of Anti-Semitism”

Tad Delay, “Evangelical Zionism”

David Markus, “Persecution Terminable and Interminable”

Kaleem Hawa, “Like a Bag Trying to Empty”

Evan Goldstein, “Freud’s Jewish Closet”

Donald Moss, “On Representations of Evil”

Lama Khouri, “Is This a Dream or for Real?”

Yasmin El-Rifae, “To Know What They Know”

Nadia Bou Ali, “Ugly Enjoyment”