Exhibition opening: My Life Began Several Centuries Ago. An Ecosystem of Circulating Images – With Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré

For centuries, the relationship between Africa and Europe has been determined by a hegemonic system of exploitation in the sense of a Western-influenced capitalist plantation logic. These colonial continuities and legacies perpetuate asymmetries of power that produce ever new forms of forced migration and displacement. How can the multiple decolonial ecologies that remain hidden behind such power imbalances be uncovered and made collectively fruitful? Malian photographer, filmmaker and activist Bouba Touré and artist Raphaël Grisey create with their archive project Somoankidi Coura. A generative archive a hybrid and living ecosystem of images that documents a rupture in the recurring narrative. In the autonomously organized agricultural cooperative Somankidi Coura, founded in 1977 by former migrant workers and activists in France, the “return” to West African Mali is followed by reappropriation and a communal utopian design. Somankidi Coura is a symbol of self-empowerment, or in Bouba Touré’s words “la naissance d’une conscience en Afrique” (“the awakening of an African consciousness”).

02.06.2023 – 30.06.2023
14:00- 19:00 (Fri-Sun) or on request at a.stillger@uni-koeln.de

Exhibition opening 01.06.2023, 18-21 clock

Organizer

Academy of the Arts of the World

DFG Research Training Group connect-exclude

The event is sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG)