"Reparations begin in the body, and that is where our poems must begin" – On the Labour of Repairing

"Reparations begin in the body, and that is where our poems must begin".[1] – On the Labour of Repairing
Elena Agudio and Tuli Mekondjo, hosted by Raphaël Cuomo and Maria Iorio

Reparations are juridically understood as a compensation for historical crimes and inequities, having the aim of remedying injustices and helping specific groups of people or populations to re-prosper. Considering reparations not as a financial debt only (but also), this seminar grapples with the thinking and writing of activists, scholars, and writers that address reparations as a way to find “new ways of redeeming bodies in the society”.[2] Reparations may begin in the body, as poet Harmony Holiday states. In a conversation with artists Tuli Mekondjo, Maria Iorio and Raphäel Cuomo and with the students/artists, we will ponder: What are possible formats of reparations? How can communities and vulnerable individuals be remunerated and supported in more complex and alternative ways? What forms of solidarity are possible when relations are broken beyond repair?

Reparations correspond to both immaterial and material injury, since the injuries of past actions are not just experienced materially, but felt intergenerationally, corporeally, affectively. While material remunerations thus involve, for instance, the return of stolen land, objects, monetary payments, and the reconstruction of infrastructure, immaterial possibilities of addressing the mental and cultural legacy of colonialism are much more complicated and involve psychic reconciliation, moral recalibration, and a complicated process of self- and community repair.[3]

Drawing upon research done at SAVVY Contemporary for the project For the Phoenix to Find Its Form In Us: On Restitution, Reparations, and Rehabilitation and on the programme A House for Mending, Troubling, and Repairing developed for the artists’ residency Villa Romana in Florence, we engage in artistic strategies and research grappling with the labour of repairing.

[1] Harmony Holiday, Reparations begin in the body: A look at why the first and most crucial poetic gesture for a black poet in the West is a knowledge and mastery of her body, originally published: October 6th, 2016 on poetryfoundation.org:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2016/10/reparations-begin-in-the-body-a-look-at-why-the-first-and-most-crucial-poetic-gesture-for-a-black-poet-in-the-west-is-a-knowledge-and-mastery-of-her-body. Last access: 25 May 2021.

[2] Harmony Holiday, Reparations (forthcoming, see:
https://www.amazon.com/Reparations-Harmony-Holiday/dp/1944380132).

[3] For the internalization of colonialism see also: Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1983. (https://web.archive.org/web/20120227110138/http://multiworldindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/the-intimate-enemy.pdf) and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization” in The South Atlantic Quarterly, Winter 2012 (http://www.adivasiresurgence.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Silvia-Rivera-Cusicanqui-Chixinakax-Eng1.pdf) 

BIOGRAPHIES

Elena Agudio, born in Italy and having been based in Berlin between 2008 and 2023, is a mother, an art historian and a curator whose practice is concerned with issues of decanonisation, migration and diasporic belonging, ecological and planetary habitability, and the creation of sustainable infrastructures for and with vulnerable communities. She is in particular interested in exploring the potential of curatorial practices as forms of troubling, with a focus on their performative and relational aspects.

Since December 2022 she is the director of the artist residency Villa Romana in Florence, where she is unfolding the programme A House for Mending, Troubling, and Repairing.

Between 2013 and 2023 she served as artistic co-director at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, alongside its founder and director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Since 2012, she has been also artistic director of the non-profit association Association of Neuroesthetics (AoN)_Platform for Art and Neuroscience, a project in collaboration with the Medical University of Charité and The School of Mind and Brain of the Humboldt University encouraging both a dialogue and lasting cooperation between contemporary art and the cognitive sciences. She writes and teaches, and between 2017 and 2023 she has been lecturing at the Weißensee School of Art in Berlin - at *foundationClass, in the Foundation Courses, and from 2020 at the Master Degree in Spatial Strategies (Raumstrategien). In 2017 and 2018 she was Guestprofessor at HFBK (Kunsthochschule für Bildende Künste) in Hamburg and Resident Fellow at Helsinki University of the Arts. Since 2022 she is faculty member of the of the Summer School Contemporary Art & Curatorship: from documenta to the Biennale in Venice, organised by Ca' Foscari School for International Education (SIE) in collaboration with the Venice Biennale.

Among the last curated and co-curated exhibition projects: Domestic Exercises. Homework for a Sustainable Togetherness (Villa Romana, Firenze); Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts (after the butcher, Berlin); a house is a house is a home (Villa Romana, Firenze); Testing Ground/Seeding Worlds. Ecological Imaginaries for Agropoetics and Co-cultivation in the Garden of Villa Romana (Villa Romana, Firenze); Emergent Strategies from the Deep (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin); The Wall Between Us. (Be)Longing, Repair and Its Politics of Affects (*MaGA, Museo Arte Contemporanea Gallarate, Italy, and workshop series at SAVVY and Jindrich Chalupecky Society, Prague); For the Phoenix to Find Its Form in Us. On Restitution, Reparations, and Rehabilitation; Insectopia by Robert Gabris (Villa Romana, Florence, Italy); Latitude on Air: Unsettling Power Relations (radio festival with Goethe-Institut and reboot.fm); Exlamating Still! On the Noise of Images (Rencontres de Bamako – African Biennale of Photography); Ultrasanity. On Madness, Sanitation, Antipsychiatry and Resistance (SAVVY Contemporary); Soil is an Inscribed Body. On Sovereignty and Agropoetics (SAVVY Contemporary); Ecologies of Darkness. Building Grounds on Shifting Sands (SAVVY Contemporary).

Tuli Mekondjo is a self-taught Namibian artist based between Namibia and Berlin, where she moved in as recipient of the prestigious DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Program in 2022. She works with mixed media including embroidery, photo transfer, resin, and mahangu (millet) grain—a Namibian food staple. Drawing on colonial and war-time photographic archives, Mekondjo’s practice explores Namibian history and identity politics. Drawing on histories of change, loss, and submission—particularly when it comes to women—she stitches between past and present. In many recent works, the artist positions herself in dialogue with her ancestors, directly acknowledging their pain, whilst referencing multiple African folklore traditions. Tuli Mekondjo is recipient of the Villa Romana Prize 2024.