The exhibition Cartographies of Care by Nnenna Onuoha and myself, which opens during Black History/Futures Month, charts not only Black Berliners’ often-difficult experiences with the German healthcare system, but also how they find solace and restoration in Afrodiasporic healing arts.
Care is at the core of Black, queer and feminist traditions. Care is ubiquitous, and its parameters dictate how we move through the world; determining whether we survive or thrive. Cartographies of Care traces how healing is imagined and exercised in African diasporic bodies. It gathers experiences and practices from a variety of cultures living in Berlin. These rituals generate modalities of healing that overcome ongoing traumas faced by Black womxn, non-binary, and transgender people who are all threatened by the climate crisis, health inequities, and the rise of the far right. This exhibition is a space of experimentation that works through ancestral memories, mobile archives, and Black futures. It is an invitation for a collective sensorial experience that shows how Afrodiasporic people repair.\
This work began with my ongoing anxieties around practitioners that do not acknowledge my pain interspersed with my desire to find alternative modes of healing. I will say is that Black history month is not just about acknowledging Black excellence from the exceptional but about appreciating the African descended folks that we know in real life, the ones who break bread with us, the ones who laugh with us, and the ones who trust us.
The exhibition can be viewed at alpha nova galeria futura until 13 March 2020.
These are some highlights from on the opening on 14 February 2020. Photographs by Ceren Saner.