C&AL: The third project, Museo Afroviviente (Museum of Afro-Living), is a performative piece which revives Afro-women from the American continent. Can you tell us about the project?
HI: It is a guided tour that reconstructs the history of 13 Afro-women from the Americas. Through that, we try to give visibility to our black corporality, distancing ourselves from the white Eurocentric discourse. The idea of plurality has marked this project from the beginning; the 13 women who are part of the Museum are from different places. It is about highlighting the diversity of bodies, gender, sexual identities, as well as work, etc. For this project we invited Black women from inside the country as well as outside Uruguay, who could give voice to the Black characters of their respective countries.
What unifies us is that the life experience of each and every one of them is intertwined with their militancy against racism from different fronts.
C&AL: How do different audiences respond to the Museo Afroviviente?
HI: In general, the majority of people who have attended any of the Museo Afroviviente’s performances have supported the work. Particularly women activists and militants have left the performance very emotional. In Cerro Largo, a department in the north of the country where the Afro-descendent population lives with a deeply rooted structural racism and homophobia, a large white population attended the performance and, to our surprise, they recognized that more interventions of this kind are necessary to dismantle prevailing structures.
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