STANDING IN THE CRACKS OF MULTIPLE HISTORIES
Microresidency August 2024
With Cianga
FIRST WORD, LAST WORD: A CITY ALIVE
CREATIVE (WRITING) WORKSHOP
23.08.2024 11:00–13:00
With Cianga
Cianga invites you to a workshop that faces the ephemeral, yet enduring nature of words. As a response to the ongoing violence and erasure of peoples, there are words spoken. With a presentation on the history of language from the Baluba people of Congo, and gentrification in cities, this workshop is designed to draw attention to all that remains and fights to be alive. Participants can expect to write and/or draw in response to provided texts and images in a warm and welcoming community space. This workshop is designed to be replicable and adaptable as a response to erasure, and as a record and testament to those who are still fighting.
LANGUAGE The workshop takes place in English
FREE ENTRY Donations welcome
ACCESS Our space is accessible by wheelchair
PARTICIPATION The workshop is open to everyone but spots are limited. To join us kindly send an email with subject line "A City Alive“ to workshop@savvy-contemporary.com with your name.
Please join us in welcoming the artist and poet Cianga in the SAVVY house! Their residency is the second in the framework of our project STANDING IN THE CRACKS OF MULTIPLE HISTORIES which investigates the contours of the history of the United States as well as the hegemonic narratives that form and uphold it. We are studying the ruptures caused by these narratives in an effort to unearth, or perhaps invoke the stories that may fall or take form between the cracks.
We are honoured to have Cianga with us in order to reflect and exchange on their interdisciplinary practices. The two-week micro-residency is also an opportunity for the invited artists to get to know the work and research of SAVVY Contemporary and the environment that we operate within. We are actively experimenting on the different ways in which we can use this format to build on and tap into the artists' practices.
Cianga [she/they] is a Congolese artist based in California, by way of South Africa. A winner of the Evaristo Prize for African poetry, Cianga creates interdisciplinary work that seeks to decolonize and disrupt language. They are currently an MFA candidate and have received residency and fellowship support from UC Berkeley’s Arts & Research Center, Brooklyn Poets, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Foglifter Journal, Rappahannock Review, EcoTheo Review and elsewhere. They write, draw, compose, perform with the belief of black art as radical joy and critical protest.
FUNDING This project is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
