A home-based residency initiated by OCA in collaboration with the artist-initiated non-profit library and research centre Livingstone Office for Contemporary Art (LoCA) in Zambia and the artist community Casa Ma in Costa Rica.
Each institutional partner nominated two peers (artists, community advocates and activists, scholars, and other arts practitioners) to be in dialogue with other fellows around the world to work collaboratively in developing new and existing ideas, including, but not limited to: blackness in the digital world (digital healing, digital communities, surveillance), institutional representation, who is it for and what is its value, what is required to create the world – understood as a multilayer of communities – we want to live in now (investigating philosophies such as Afro -futurism, -nowism, -pessimism), the need to make colonial hierarchies and histories visible.
Outcomes of the residencies will be announced in the coming months. Stay tuned.
The six residents form a constellation of three exchanges. The first one consists of Grace Tabea Tenga (nominated by OCA) and Gladys Kalichini (nominated by LoCA). The second exchange is constituted by Maritea Dæhlin (nominated by OCA) and Marton Robinson (nominated by Casa Ma). And Julianny Ariza (nominated by Casa Ma) together with Benny Blow (nominated by LoCA) form the third exchange.
The geographical contexts of the residents had an important impact on their reflections, and so, it served as a way to approach the resident’s discourses from a trans local and collaborative perspective.
Grace Tabea Tenga is an activist, psychology student, art writer and African aesthetic dancer. She writes reviews for Klassekampen, Shakespearetidsskriftet, Scenekunst.no, Periskop.no, Ballade.no. She is currently pursuing a degree in psychology at the University of Oslo and has previously studied Interdisciplinary Gender Studies there. As an African-aesthetic dancer she was part of the Tabanka Dance Ensemble from 2015 to 2021. She is member of the Black female collective B16.
Gladys Kalichini is a contemporary visual artist and researcher from Lusaka, Zambia. Her work centres around notions of erasure, memory, and representations and visibilities of women in colonial resistance histories. Gladys is currently a PhD candidate at Rhodes University in South Africa and a member of the Arts of Africa and Global Souths research programme, supported by the Andrew. W. Mellon foundation and the National Research Fund.
Maritea Dæhlin is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Norway and Mexico. She is interested in human behaviours, emotions, rituals and encounters. Her work spans between theater, video performance, performance art and text. Her art comes off as playful, non-linear and sometimes absurd. Dæhlin was an associated artist at Black Box teater (2020-2021). Her work has been nominated for the Norwegian critic’s prize (2020) and for the Heddapris (2022).
Costa Rican artist and scholar Marton Robinson has an interdisciplinary background informed by his studies in both Physical Education and Art and Visual Communication. Robinson currently teaches in the Industrial Design and Art Department at Ontario College of Arts & Design University. The result is a multimedia art practice which investigates modes of communication and translation - of history, culture, and identity - that challenge popular culture’s representations and assumptions. Robinson’s work exposes the nuances present in the Afro-Latino experience, enriching the critical discourse of contemporary works of the African Diaspora.
Julianny Ariza Vólquez is a Dominican visual artist. Her recent works focus on rethinking exclusionary models in our material memory, reviewing domestic and institutional collections. She explores recovery exercises of our indigenous, Afro-descendant and matriarchal identity, mainly through sculptures, installations and paintings. She has participated in art residencies like Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Germany (2013) and AS220, U.S. (2012). She was awarded at the 28th Eduardo Leon Jimenes Art Contest (2021) and at the 27th National Biennial of Visual Arts from D. R. (2013). She's co-creator of the dominican art publication project Onto.
Bwanga ‘Benny Blow’ Kapumpa is a writer and artist from Lusaka, Zambia. He began his career writing short stories inspired by his own experiences and American pop culture on a personal blog that developed a small following. As he grew both as a person and a writer, he began to realise that there was a need for new African stories that were not included in African literature. His short story The Wandering Festival was published in A Daily Assortment of Astonishing Things (and other stories), by the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing anthology in 2016. Bwanga has also written for a handful of publications as a feature writer and was shortlisted for the Miles Morland Foundation scholarship in 2020 and 2021.
Casa Ma is a community that constantly varies its formats and its members. Focused on the dissemination of practices generated by women, queers, non-binary people, trans women, of fluid gender and diverse identity in the territory of Costa Rica, Central America, the Caribbean and its diaspora. Through our network of allies -which include artists, musicians, thinkers, curators, agitators, activists and teachers- we offer workshops, exhibitions, conversations, exchanges, etc., from where we collectively build spaces to think about urgent problems, generating debates and public conversations. critics.
In that sense, we function as a nomadic institution, which works collaboratively creating alliances with different organizations, foundations, museums, universities, among others. Thus generating a place for feminist research and the development of community public programs.
The Livingstone Office for Contemporary Arts (LoCA), founded in 2014 is an artist-initiated non-profit library and research centre based in Livingstone, Zambia. LoCA functions as a collective/collaborative platform for reflections and an experimental think-tank, exploring histories (colonial histories, social and political histories and their legacies) and how they relate to language and contemporary art in both a local and an international context. LoCA strives to raise awareness, facilitate and promote Zambian contemporary art, African art history, and research.
It provides a critical discourse towards urban Zambian contemporary issues through exhibitions, workshops, research projects, artist residence and periodicals. LoCA aims to be a community-driven space where experimental practices and fresh perspectives are fostered and shared among interdisciplinary artists, curators, scholars, cultural workers and audiences in the region.
‘You better say our names. Working towards pluricultural futures’' is a long-term project at OCA consisting of a series of digital partnerships with artists, thinkers, curators, and organisations, both within Norway and globally, specifically aiming at strengthening the networks with black communities in the arts and working towards pluricultural futures. The title ‘You Better Say Our Names’ is borrowed from artist Duduzile Mathonsi’s contribution to the programme.
