Practicing Freedom and Refusal
Practicing Freedom and Refusal unfolds as part of a year-long multilocational artistic program that actively engages with the topic of restitution by centralizing research-based artistic practices and lifeworlds that sit with the tensions of colonial terror and confront the (im)possibility of restitution, rematriation, and freedom.
Practicing Freedom and Refusal draws inspiration from Kaiama L. Glover’s book A Regarded Self, which conveys ‘a sustained reflection about refusal.’1 Her perspectives on practices of freedom and refusal offer an ideal vantage point from which to engage with the work of activists, thinkers, and artists who explore practices of freedom and refusal as forms of resistance, restitution and sustenance. Rephrasing Glover, this exhibition and public program center practices of freedom and community, as seen in the work of artists who are bound (un)comfortably together by a shared set of politics, realities and horizons. Taking cues from Glover’s reading of the notion of refusal invites us to engage with the importance of similarly radical concepts and language, including, but not limited to, disorder, self-love, self-possession, self-defense, self-preservation, and self-regard in addition to active processes of disturbing, unsettling, dissenting, dismantling, uprooting, and undoing.
The practice of freedom and how it relates to the community, as well as the importance of solidarity between individuals who share similar attitudes, politics, and imaginaries are ideas that highlight the essence of Sustaining the Otherwise as a whole, and this exhibition specifically. With that in mind, Practicing Freedom and Refusal positions the work of artists AYO, Masimba Hwati, Christian Nyampeta, Adeju Thompson, and Helena Uambembe as distinctly shaped by the nuances and complexities of the dual action of practicing freedom and refusal.
The exhibition serves as a reminder that restitution is not only about returning cultural heritage objects, but also about reconfiguring, rehabilitating and complicating the discourse around decoloniality, restitution and reparations, and sitting with the discomfort of those propositions. Through this collaborative project and exhibition we aim to stretch the notion of restitution and repair to give space for all the lifeforms and stories that animate the lifeworld of both the objects and individuals . It’s important to keep in mind that cultural heritage objects sit in a space of contested, entangled relationality. Rethinking restitution implies that one has to question, debate, feel uncomfortable, and to really fight about (and for) the objects and what they represent in relation to the past, present and future.
European museums and governments didn’t arrive at restitution on their own, but as a result of activists’ constant pressure and mobilization. Within this context, it is urgent to acknowledge that restitution must be more than a symbolic or representational gesture. It is an ancestral, spiritual, communal and epistemic invocation to continuously practice freedom. Approaching freedom as something that emerges relationally across different sites, histories and urgencies, is an absolutely necessary part of the process of rethinking restitution.
Practicing Freedom and Refusal brings together works by artists AYO, Masimba Hwati, Christian Nyampeta, Adeju Thompson and Helena Uambembe. Their research and artworks offer multiple entrance points for rethinking restitution, conveyed through film, sculpture, textile and sound-based works, which offer ample room for reflection and critical questioning: What does it mean to practice freedom and refusal today? What do we want? What do we say? Which stories, dreams, and forms of ancestral knowledge effectively sustain artists, activists, communities and other troublemakers?
By holding space for multiplicity, contradiction and disagreement, the exhibition and its underlying research project propose artistic practice as a mode of thinking, and refusal as a form of care.
[1] Kaiama L. Glover, A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2021), 1.
Practicing Freedom and Refusal draws inspiration from Kaiama L. Glover’s book A Regarded Self, which conveys ‘a sustained reflection about refusal.’1 Her perspectives on practices of freedom and refusal offer an ideal vantage point from which to engage with the work of activists, thinkers, and artists who explore practices of freedom and refusal as forms of resistance, restitution and sustenance. Rephrasing Glover, this exhibition and public program center practices of freedom and community, as seen in the work of artists who are bound (un)comfortably together by a shared set of politics, realities and horizons. Taking cues from Glover’s reading of the notion of refusal invites us to engage with the importance of similarly radical concepts and language, including, but not limited to, disorder, self-love, self-possession, self-defense, self-preservation, and self-regard in addition to active processes of disturbing, unsettling, dissenting, dismantling, uprooting, and undoing.
The practice of freedom and how it relates to the community, as well as the importance of solidarity between individuals who share similar attitudes, politics, and imaginaries are ideas that highlight the essence of Sustaining the Otherwise as a whole, and this exhibition specifically. With that in mind, Practicing Freedom and Refusal positions the work of artists AYO, Masimba Hwati, Christian Nyampeta, Adeju Thompson, and Helena Uambembe as distinctly shaped by the nuances and complexities of the dual action of practicing freedom and refusal.
The exhibition serves as a reminder that restitution is not only about returning cultural heritage objects, but also about reconfiguring, rehabilitating and complicating the discourse around decoloniality, restitution and reparations, and sitting with the discomfort of those propositions. Through this collaborative project and exhibition we aim to stretch the notion of restitution and repair to give space for all the lifeforms and stories that animate the lifeworld of both the objects and individuals . It’s important to keep in mind that cultural heritage objects sit in a space of contested, entangled relationality. Rethinking restitution implies that one has to question, debate, feel uncomfortable, and to really fight about (and for) the objects and what they represent in relation to the past, present and future.
European museums and governments didn’t arrive at restitution on their own, but as a result of activists’ constant pressure and mobilization. Within this context, it is urgent to acknowledge that restitution must be more than a symbolic or representational gesture. It is an ancestral, spiritual, communal and epistemic invocation to continuously practice freedom. Approaching freedom as something that emerges relationally across different sites, histories and urgencies, is an absolutely necessary part of the process of rethinking restitution.
Practicing Freedom and Refusal brings together works by artists AYO, Masimba Hwati, Christian Nyampeta, Adeju Thompson and Helena Uambembe. Their research and artworks offer multiple entrance points for rethinking restitution, conveyed through film, sculpture, textile and sound-based works, which offer ample room for reflection and critical questioning: What does it mean to practice freedom and refusal today? What do we want? What do we say? Which stories, dreams, and forms of ancestral knowledge effectively sustain artists, activists, communities and other troublemakers?
By holding space for multiplicity, contradiction and disagreement, the exhibition and its underlying research project propose artistic practice as a mode of thinking, and refusal as a form of care.
[1] Kaiama L. Glover, A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2021), 1.