Serubiri Moses & Awuor Onyango, 'Further Notes on Anxiet(ies)' | 12 Hour Sit-in Revel

Serubiri Moses & Awuor Onyango
Further Notes on Anxiet(ies)
Talk

Abstract

The School of Anxiety was an itinerant unteaching environment organized within the context of the 10th Berlin Biennial of Contemporary Art (2017-2018), with a curatorial team led by Gabi Ngcobo. The project was conceived and coordinated by Serubiri Moses, a member of the curatorial team, and included artists Awuor Onyango, Nyakallo Maleke, and Aganza Kisaka. The project travelled to three cities including Johannesburg, South Africa (2017); Nairobi, Kenya (2018), and Berlin, Germany (2018), where it concluded. The artists spent a week in each city.


The presentation will foreground the methodology and the Nairobi chapter of the project. Focusing on site visits to Kenya’s Independence grounds; Uhuru Park, and Freedom Corner inside it, as well as the War Cemetery, Moses and Onyango will examine how the project was shaped by curatorial pedagogy methods, curricula and autopoiesis.

Biographies

Serubiri Moses is a Ugandan writer and curator based in New York. He is currently Adj. Asst. Professor in Art History at Hunter College, and Adj. Asst. Professor in Art History at New York University. He has delivered lectures at Williams College, Yale University, University of Pittsburgh, and The New School. Moses has organised exhibitions across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.

Serubiri Moses is currently co-curator for the fifth edition of the perennial survey of contemporary art, Greater New York, at MoMA PS1 and was part of the curatorial team for the tenth Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art entitled We Don’t Need Another Hero (2017-2018) where he led the School of Anxiety project.


Awuor Onyango lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya. A writer, artist, filmmaker and photographer, Onyango is based in the pagan citadel of Nairobi in neo-colonial Kenya. Her practice is concerned with exploring politics of the personal, body and the self as art. Her interests include exploring the Black African feminine, the gendered leanings of society, the archetypes and psycho-social role of the queer and various socio-cultural implications of ‘African-ness’. Her aim is to question the colonial, the religious and the ‘globalised’ view of the African as believed by the African, the African diaspora and the colonialist and his kin. Her approach is experimental and often results in mixed media pieces and film and photo-based installations. Recent exhibitions include School of Anxiety at Jo’Burg Art Fair, Johannesburg (2017); Appropriation and other practises, HBK Braunschweig (2018); A Celebration of Queer Love, Iwalewa Haus (2018); Genesis: Autonomous Bodies, Iwalewa Haus (2018). In 2018 Onyango undertook a residency through Focas Scotland which was hosted by Street Level Photoworks.

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12 Hour Sit-in Revel
Saturday 25 June 2022, 11am–11pm
University of Dundee Botanic Garden

Part of Cooper Gallery's long term project, 'The Ignorant Art School'.

Funding support from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee Botanic Garden, Creative Scotland, British Council, Goethe Institut and Scottish Contemporary Art Network

[denisekpo]

Quite interesting. Reminds me of my visit to the major sites of memory in South Africa, 2013. Soweto, the Hector memorial, the Apartheid museum etc. History truly comes alive in these 'lieux de memoire'. My tiny worry is how we use these memories to perpetuate the victim single story of Africa. I think that racialisation was generally bad but self-racialisation is plainly masochistic. We postAfricans prefer a healthier artistic and intellectual interpretation of and engagement with the memorials of history. But I really enjoyed the presentation. Congratulations Moses and your team