The Gathering is the Medicine.
An evening of listening and communing

The Gathering is the Medicine  is an evening of listening and communing exploring shared rhythms of conviviality and solidarity. Convened by artist Mũthoni Mwangi and curator Olivia Berkowicz, the event will present their individual practices as well as sharing mutual interests in sound, archives, radio and queerness. The event foregrounds how queer identity and communities are intertwined with national or dominant narrative and the ways in which they enact the agency to write their own narratives. This event is part of their residency at SAVVY Contemporary through their participation in the MuseumsLab.

Mũthoni Mwangi will share their work exploring archival erasure of women and queer people's contributions to liberation struggles in dominant narratives. Labelled as a “passive wing”, the vast information and care networks that supported liberation struggles in the colony and postcolony are often overlooked by dominant historical narratives. Mũthoni's work focuses on weaving strategies of sustenance drawing from oral history archives, family archives and black feminist thought. As part of their work at Calotropis, they have been exploring radio as a space to give voice to these stories and lived realities through poetry, conversation and sonic collages. 

Olivia Berkowicz will share her ongoing research on queer and minor voices within national solidarity movements, in this case the Baltic Way. In 1989, the Baltic Way assembled two million people in a 600 km long human chain across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. As part of her work on the sonic platform Tentative Transmits, she has been interested in how radio has been used in resistance movements in Central and Eastern Europe. 

Finally, she will share a few ongoing projects as part of her work as curator at the Röhsska Museum which focus on questions of coloniality, modernity and archives.

The evening includes a film screening of How to Live (2025) by Njoroge Muthoni. Through a documentary lens, the film sheds light on the lives of young LGBTQIA+ pioneers in Kenya as they embrace ballroom culture and drag performance, building vibrant safe spaces where African queer joy and self-expression flourish. The film features conversations grappling with African queer identities and highlights the ways in which gathering in queer joy offers space for solidarity and care. 

Mũthoni Mwangi  is an independent artist researcher working within African Philosophies and Digital Heritage to deconstruct and decolonize systems of knowledge. They are a poet, zine maker and amateur textile artist. They have shown their work previously at the KLA Art festival 2024 in Kampala, Uganda and Kilele 2025 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Olivia Berkowicz  is a curator, writer and researcher of visual and sonic culture. She is currently the Curator of Exhibitions at the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg. Her work sits at the intersection of art, architecture and technology, with a specific interest in archives and collections. 

Between 2020 and 2025, she co-founded and convened the audio platform Tentative Transmits, investigating radio histories, solidarity practices, and migration across and beyond Central and Eastern Europe. A significant part of her curatorial practice focuses on archival phantoms and diasporic memories in post-socialist and postcolonial conditions.

Her work has been presented at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Index – Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Silent Green, Röda Sten Konsthall, Mint and MNAC Bucharest. To date, she has also been selected for the Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course, Akademie Schloss Solitude, and Rupert.