Carrying Histories
Carrying Histories
Residency dates: 19 October – 19 November
Oslo Kunstforening is happy to host the residency Carrying Histories during the fall 2019. Carrying Histories will explore personal and cultural histories through process and discussion. It will unpack the burden of working with historical material, building cross cultural awareness of past and present power structures.
Conversations developed within the residency group will be presented to Oslo audiences through a series of public events. This residency is open to anyone with relevant interest and experience in the topic, be they artist, curator, writer, anthropologist, historian, educator, dancer etc. The residency has been developed by Nairobi-based artist Syowia Kyambi and PRAKSIS, in collaboration with Oslo Kunstforening.
Participating alongside Kyambi will be Tyler Matthew Oyer (US), Bianca Turner (BR), Ayman Alazraq (PS/NO), Abdul Dube (ZA/DK), Olya Grotova (RU/UK), Msumanga Nondumiso Lwazi (ZA), Neja Tomsic (SL), Lisa Andrine Bernhoft (NO), Elenie Chung (US/TT), and Harnoor Bhangu (CA).
In articulating her thoughts for the residency, Syowia Kyambi (KE) writes “I enter the world as this, how will I leave it?: We carry our histories on our backs, hunched over and barely heard, constantly swimming against the stream. The body is a site of trauma. The body holds, codes and re-codes, sharing a multitude of layered stories. Body memory expresses itself in a non-linear timeline, presenting pasts beyond our experienced past resulting in repeated onslaught of distress. Collective history weaves a web in the memory of our contemporary bodies. We still live in sexist and racist environs, and so are bound to navigate the nuances of identity.
The history of where our bodies come from is a crucial element to my making process. We have to go into the nuances of identity and one way that we can do that is through the methodology of ‘autohistoria’. Coined by Gloria Anzaldúa, autohistoria involves “outlining the potential of plural, ambivalent, unstable, and performative expressions of the self, so as to allow for the dissemination of personal, depolarized narratives” (p. 155. Kaila, Jan, Anita Seppä and Henk Slager. Futures of Artistic Research: At the Intersection of Utopia, Academia and Power. Helsinki: Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, 2017). To repeat, reuse, rewrite and layer creates rituals which resist the normative narratives that support exploitive power structures.
I am interested to continue to develop the tools I use to re-appropriate and reclaim autonomy through the body, performance, and sharing processes with others, and to learn from the toolkits that others bring to the residency.”
Carrying Histories
Bio
Syowia Kyambi’s practice probes issues of race, perception, gender and memory. Her work examines how contemporary human experience is influenced by constructed histories, creating installations that include a performative practice to narrate stories and activate objects, exploring cultural identities, linking them to issues of loss, memory, race, and gender.
Based in Nairobi and of Kenyan and German origin, Syowia Kyambi has received commissions by the Kenya Institute of Administration, the National Museum of Kenya and the Art 4 Action Foundation in Kenya. She is an alumnus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been the recipient of several awards and grants, including most recently the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, being shortlisted for the Financial Times Emerging Artist Award and recipient of the Art in Global Health Grant from the Wellcome Trust Fund in the United Kingdom. Her work has been exhibited in museums in Belgium, Finland, Kenya, Mali, Sweden, Germany, Zimbabwe, France, United Kingdom, Mexico, South Africa North America and Ireland.
Public events
21.10.2019, 5-7:30 pm
PRAKSIS residency: Carrying Histories
Meet the residents
22.10.2019, 6-7:30 pm
PRAKSIS residency: Carrying Histories
Mythological Migration: a talk by artist Abdullah Qureshi
29.10.2019, 6-7:30 pm
PRAKSIS residency: Carrying Histories
Process, Materiality and the Archive: a talk by artist Syowia Kyambi
30.10.2019, 7-8 pm
PRAKSIS residency: Carrying Histories
CALLING ALL DIVAS: reading and screening organized by artist Tyler Matthew Oyer
02.10.2019, 2-3:30 pm
PRAKSIS residency: Carrying Histories
Counter-chronologies of reproductive control: a talk by artist duo @criticaldías
05.11.2019, 8-9 pm at The Dubliner
PRAKSIS residency: Carrying Histories
My granddad's car: a talk by artist Sayed Sattar Hasan
08.11.2019, 4-6 pm
PRAKSIS residency: Carrying Histories
Healing by making – duodji as a way of life: a talk by Liisa-Rávná Finbog and Tatjana Kolpus
12.11.2019, 6-7:30 pm
PRAKSIS residency: Carrying Histories
Commonplaces and entanglements: a talk by dr. Dalida María Benfield and Christopher A. Bratton (CAD+SR)
14.11.2019, 6-8 pm
PRAKSIS residency: Carrying Histories
Public sharing event
PRAKSIS residencies are structured around the interests and needs of their participants. The particular form that each residency takes is developed collectively through discussion once the group comes together. Though convened by Syowia Kyambi, the group will be of a flat-hierarchy, and will feature a mix of self-lead activities and arranged activities. Residents are welcomed to suggest or lead an action, activity or workshop with the group, that will clarify and support their own background, interests or methodologies. Participants are also encouraged to contribute towards a shared resource list in advance of the residency, potentially including readings, podcasts, films, music, or other materials for consideration during the residency.
The residency and its events is supported by The Goethe Institute, Oslo Kommune and Arts Council Norway. Oslo Kunstforening is supported by the City of Oslo and Arts Council Norway.