Quilombo

The coalition-based tri-continental research and exhibition project involves the artists Carolina Brunelli (CH/BRA), Joseph Kasau (with Stéphane Kabila, DRC), Paulo Nazareth (BRA), Maya Quilolo (BRA), and Wisrah Villefort (BRA). The exhibition is curated by Samuel Leuenberger, Patrick Mudekereza and Benedikt Wyss. It includes a contribution by Denise Bertschi (CH) and opens with a concert by Orakle Ngoy (DRC). «Quilombo» comprised residencies in Lugano (Lago Mio artist residency) and Basel (Atelier Mondial – International arts exchange program), and a workshop with the Centre for African Studies of the University of Basel. A catalog is planned for Spring 2022 as part of the opening of the exhibition's second itinerary at Lago Mio in Lugano. ABOUT THE PROJECT «Quilombo» was developed out of a personal invitation between the Swiss-based institution SALTS and the Congo-based Waza art center, in order to collaborate, exchange, and learn from each other during a full year of co-programming and co-curation. The foundation for an intensive collaboration with the artists within the project «Quilombo» is laid in the partnership with the artist residency Lago Mio Lugano on the Swiss border with Italy. Once synonymous with escape and resistance, ‹quilombo› today stands for a Brazilian settlement of African descent. Anthropologists and historians meanwhile have arrived at a new understanding of these rural communities, calling for a broader definition: Regardless of their specific history, quilombos share collective identities and notions, linking them to their African roots and making them fight common battles as people in DRC, Switzerland or anywhere else: against capitalism and racism, and for the equitable distribution of resources. The project «Quilombo» attempts to build on the idea of a «Black Atlantic», coined by British-Guyanese historian and writer Paul Gilroy in 1993 as a «Counterculture of Modernity» in the relations between Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Can we activate aesthetics sensitive to common concerns, taking advantage of the digital age’s challenges, particularly in the unexpected connectivity of our pandemic era? Social injustice has its roots in the history of exploitation of natural resources and human labor and continues to this day. How can this be undermined by an alternative reading of human relations between the three continents, imagining an ecology that empowers humanism and diversity? ARTISTS Maya Quilolo (BRA, physical resident in the project «Quilombo») (*1994) was born in a quilombola community in Minas Gerais. Maya graduated in Anthropology and Audiovisual in Belo Horizonte. She acts in the interchange between performance arts, visual arts, and cultural diversity – interested in multidisciplinary investigations that address the potential of the black body. Her Research explores water as an element that connects different people, countries, organisms. For the performance Ìpòrì (2019, Nigeria) she crossed the Atlantic carrying water from South American rivers to the African continent – in order to express the transatlantic relationships. Maya’s work is inspired by shamanistic techniques of the indigenous peoples from the Amazon, relating water as an element in connection with life, fertility, ancestry, the Atlantic crossing, and the diaspora. Joseph Kasau (DR Congo, physical resident in the project «Quilombo) (1995) – after graduating in Information and Communication Sciences from the University of Lubumbashi, specializing in performing arts (audiovisual, cinema, and theater) – completed internships, training, workshops and residencies in various cultural centers in the country and abroad before defining himself as an artist. Kasau collaborates with Stéphane Kabila (researcher and curator, DR Congo) 1993 – in search for identity to put themselves in dialogue with the collective history and be able to question their communities on the links between the history of slavery, colonization, territories, indigenous peoples, yesterday and today. Carolina Brunelli (CH, regularly visiting resident (living at home) in the project «Quilombo) (*1988) is a Swiss artist born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, with a Brasilian mother and a Swiss father. Carolina has developed an awareness about the importance of the untold stories of oppression and resistance of indigenous and black communities in Brasil. Her Bachelor's graduation work (since 2020 MFA at the HGK in Basel) was a homage to all black women who lost their children. She’s planning to develop her research on two figures in the history of African Diaspora’s resistance: Queen Tereza, leader of the Quilombo de Quariterê, situated in the Amazon forest at the border to Bolivia, and Aqualtune, warrior daughter of a Mani Kongo (“King” of the Kongo Empire), slave after losing the war against the Portuguese, leader of the most famous Quilombo in Brasil, Palmares, grandmother of the great Zumbi. Carolina is looking for the opportunity to finally exchange with other kindred spirit artists and learn from them. Paulo Nazareth (BRA, non-physical resident in the project «Quilombo). About Paulo: «Old man born in the city of Borun Nak [Vale do Rio Doce] Minas Gerais, and living as a global nomad, Paulo Nazareth's work is often the result of precise and simple gestures, which bring about broader ramifications, raising awareness to press issues of immigration, racialization, globalization colonialism, and its effects in the production and consumption of art in his native Brazil and the Global South. While his work may manifest in video, photography, and found objects, his strongest medium may be cultivating relationships with people he encounters on the road — particularly those who must remain invisible due to their legal status or those who are repressed by governmental authorities. In certain aspects, Nazareth deliberately embodies the romantic ideal of the wandering artist in search of himself and universal truths, to unveil stereotyped assumptions about national identity, cultural history, and human value.» Wisrah Villefort (BRA, non-physical resident in the project «Quilombo) (*1989) is a mixed-race individual with African, Indigenous Brazilian, and European roots. The tri-continental foundation of the «Quilombo» program was central to his most recent work while he – as a queer, POC artist living in the Global South – often feels left out of the conversation. Wisrah is researching the effects of anthrophony, the sound produced by humans, on the ecologies it constitutes. Within Quilombo, he will continue this investigation to conceive a sound piece to contribute to the exhibition layer of the program. With the proposed activation of aesthetics sensitive to common concerns, Wisrah echoes the thinking of critic and curator Cedriq Fauq on the updated conceptualism conceived by BIPOC artists that engage with strategies to refuse representational performances of blackness designed by the West. «Quilombo» is presented in collaboration with the multidisciplinary biennial festival Culturescapes that, in 2021, is focused on Amazonia. The project is kindly supported by kulturelles.bl, Pro Helvetia Südafrika, Temperatio, Cantone Ticino, Città di Lugano and La Mobiliare.