Resisting through arts and writing, the women's way
While the world is crumbling, I want to focus for a few minutes on creativity, womanhood and resistance, as we're about the celebrate International Women's Day.
1 March 2024
Dear readers,
If you follow me on social media, you may have noticed that I have been in Senegal since 23 February, for the first time in ten years.
Before I dedicate a post to the deep issues I explored, a follow-up on my last post, between Paris, Bristol and London, pursuing a thread with wonderful creative people offering answers and insight while conflicts take my attention way to much.
I haven’t finished processing the incredible effects the Royal Academy’s show ‘Entangled Pasts’ and its related events had on me...
And I still haven’t had time to write about it, about the work of Raphael Barontini that I discussed in one of these aforementioned talks, about the ‘Women in Revolt’ exhibition at Tate Britain, or about Zined’s Sedira marvellous show that is now at the Whitechapel Gallery…. But I will!
We’re now in March, and for years 8 March has been an important date for me, known as International Women’s Day, for many reasons…
Here are some recommendations and highlights.
Draughtswom(e)n
Between 7 and 12 March, London-based Peruvian artist Macarena Rojas Osterling will collaborate with APSARA Studio on an exhibition of new works on paper, titled Draughtswoman, at the Shreeji Newsagents on Chiltern Street.
Osterling has been inspired by her home country, Peru, and produced detailed geometric drawings contrasting with the chaotic realities of motherhood, to express a longing for the urban forms she grew up around.
“Referencing Minimalism and Concretism as a nod to her South American roots, the work reflects on how it feels to live with a fragmented sense of place and grapples with feelings of dislocation, infused with a playful tone,” the venue said.
This seems like a great preview ahead of Adriano Pedrosa's forthcoming exhibition Foreigners Everywhere in Venice this April.
Her “Artist-Mother position” and exploration of the place of “the foreigner” contrasts with the mainstream contemporary art discourse.
The exhibition also coincides with the launch of a monograph about
Osterling's practice, designed by a Lima-based design studio.
“My identity is that of a post-colonial hybrid because although my ancestors have been in Lima since the Spanish arrived back in the 16th century, the country has so many wounds that you are still somehow perceived as a foreign European”, the artist said ahead of the show.
Her family is from a mix of the indigenous population and all sorts of northern and southern European immigrants. She came to the UK for a master’s degree at the RCA in 2015 and decided to stay.
“It is a tricky identity, that of Latin Americans,” she reckoned. “I suppose we were craving for a stable land and a richer country?”
Her events included exhibitions at Cromwell Place and Camden Arts Centre in recent years. And Macarena’s work was previously featured in Hettie Judah's research into Artist-Mothers a couple years ago.
Coincidently, Hettie Judah’s exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, curated for the Hayward Gallery, is coming at Arnolfini this spring.
More on this here: Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood
This will allow me to come back to the gallery that has been so important in my life, at a key moment…
I worked with Arnolfini for almost three years, first as their writer-in-residence on the ‘Still I Rise’ exhibition, then writing on all the way through the pandemic, and until I went back to full-time news journalism…
I know Arnolfini as a place of free expression and great art, and I hope it will remain that way.
The exhibitions I first covered, in 2019/20, also carried a strong feminist message and fantastic female viewpoints, including Angelica Mesiti’s remarkable ‘Assembly’ and Amak Mahmoodian’s ‘Zanjir’.
All these shows have a lot in common with the impressive ‘Women in Revolt’ at the Tate Britain, especially ‘Still I Rise’.
Themes that are still with me daily, as a woman journalist in a strange world of anti-democratic clampdown, power struggle and conflicts.
Part of me is very satisfied by the daily news work, but another part miss this phase of art history and research and long for more time to pursue it further. Hopefully, I’ll find a way to combine both.
Focus on Ramata-Toulaye Sy
In Bristol, the award-winning filmmaker Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s breathtaking debut, Banel & Adama, comes to Watershed.
It follows a lovers’ fated '“quest to carve a life for themselves beyond the expectations of others”.
Summary: Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. The young couple live in a remote village in northern Senegal and, for them, nothing else in the world exists. However, their perfect everlasting love is on a collision course with their family’s traditions - as well as an oncoming drought that strikes their community.
The woman filmmaker will be in Bristol on 13 March, for a screening followed by a Q&A with director Ramata-Toulaye Sy.
Preview: Banel & Adama - Watershed
I saw the film last summer in Paris; it a a stunning visual representation of Peul/Fulani culture in Senegal, with a strong female point of view.
My colleague at RFI English Ollia Horton did interview the filmmaker at the latest Cannes Film Festival:
Coincidently, on the same day, author and award-winning journalist Nabila Ramdani will also be in Bristol to discuss her new book, ‘Fixing France’.
Like myself, she is of Algerian descent, was born in France, and expanded her horizons and career by moving to the UK.
No need to say we have become friends and I really admire her work.
Here are the details; if in Bristol, do join!
Fixing France: How to Repair a Broken Republic
The French Republic is Broken. Can it be fixed? Nabila Ramdani will be in discussion about the challenges to which France must rise with Fraser McQueen, Lecturer in French Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Bristol.
*The event will be followed by a book signing*.
Wednesday 13 March 2024 – 16:00 –17:30 GMT
Where? University of Bristol
Location: Arts Complex, Lecture Room 8, 21 Woodland Road (7 Woodland Road for entry), BS8 1UJ
*Free and open to all students at the University of Bristol & members of the public*
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/universityofbristol14/1172578
NB. On related issues, you can watch this report from Channel 4 News, from last summer, including an interview with me in the end:
And read this article:
‘Nothing can change if we’re in denial’: French-Algerian journalist on the riots that have rocked her hometown
What could be a game-changer now is a public trial, writes Melissa Chemam
One more inspiring woman, again, from Senegal:
Franco-Senegalese documentary 'Dahomey' wins Berlin's Golden Bear
Dahomey, a documentary by Franco-Senegalese director Mati Diop probing the thorny issues surrounding Europe's return of looted antiquities to Africa, won the Berlin Film Festival's top prize Saturday.
Kenyan-Mexican Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o, the first black jury president at the 74th annual event, announced the seven-member panel's choice among 20 contenders for the Golden Bear award at a gala ceremony.
Diop said the prize "not only honours me but the entire visible and invisible community that the film represents.
"To rebuild we must first restitute, and what does restitution mean? To restitute is to do justice," she added.
Diop's dreamlike film traces the 2021 journey home of 26 precious artefacts of the Dahomey kingdom to Benin from a Paris museum.
In the movie, Diop has one of the statues recount in a haunting Fon-language voice-over his land being pillaged by the French, the circumstances of his own exile and his ultimate repatriation in Cotonou museum.
Finally, a story from Paris, where I interviews the vice-president of a charity helping in raising interest on ‘Black history’ in France, and also did an amazing work of photography in her homeland, Guinea-Bissau, another great woman:
How Black History month has slowly made its way to France
Black History month took root in the US in the 1920s before becoming a national event by the mid-1970s. Some members of the African diaspora in France have been trying to import it and, in the last decade, have succeeded in establishing a homegrown version.
Issued on: 24/02/2024 - By: Melissa Chemam
Officially observed in the US and Canada each February, and in Ireland and the United Kingdom in October, Black History month is a time to honour the achievements and contributions of key African American figures.
Efforts to launch official celebrations in France, met by mixed reception, have had trouble taking off.
Read the whole story here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/culture/20240224-how-black-history-month-has-slowly-made-its-way-to-france-bordeaux-slavery-colonialism-portugal-guinea-bissau
Thanks for reading, as usual.
More soon on Senegal…
This newsletter is free, and will remain so, please do share it and help raise awareness.
Have a wonderful month of March, International Women’s Day, and speak to you soon,
melissa
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Melissa Chemam
Journalist @ RFI English
Art Writer @ New Arab, ART UK...
Blog: https://melissa-on-the-road.blogspot.com/
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/melissachemam
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXE4ofFjz0lsRzemjdmFf7w
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