AUTOPOIESIS: Recognizing Kin Across Antipodal Topologies

AUTOPOIESIS is fourth in the curatorial series ‘Allies for the Uncertain Futures’ initiated by Shaunak Mahbubani, navigating enquiry into pluralistic co-visioning of futures through the dissolution of boundaries between the self and the other, grounded in the Buddhist philosophy of non-duality. AUTOPOIESIS is developed alongside curatorial advisors and hosts Vidisha-Fadescha (Party Office, New Delhi), Eli Moon (Bataclan Festival, Mexico City), and Madhumita Nandi (Oyoun, Berlin).

In her evocation ‘Being Human as Praxis’ (2007), Wynter expands on the importance of the origin story, centring the act of auto-narration in the process of instituting oneself as full and complex human being outside the enlightenment definition of Man — a move she describes as the ‘Autopoetic Turn/Overturn’. In resonance with Wynter’s vision, AUTOPOIESIS delves into the nuances of autobiographical art practices with roots in the antipodal topologies of South Asia, Central America and the Caribbean. Manifesting via expanded exhibitionary form in Berlin, Kassel, Mexico City, Guatemala City, New Delhi, and other sites between Aug – Dec 2022, the project aims to look beyond abstract notions of solidarity, proposing an experiment with auto-narration towards developing deeper kinships through the recognition of specific embodied positionalities.

Separated by large latitudinal distance while overlapping in longitudinal spread, both regions have a palimpsestic density of indigenous networks, erased and metamorphosed by multiple waves of colonisation. This trajectory has triggered very specific social topologies which share broad adjacencies in their dynamics of caste-colourism, extractivism, and deep-rooted cultural erasure. Coming from systemically silenced positions from within these regions and their diaspora, each of the 8 artists speaks from their own lived experience and engagement with ancestral cosmology, deploying creative strategies to re-energise wounded archives. Their sustained commitment to auto-narrative practice results in works that eschew a victim perspective, instead combining community research with empowered poetics to emulate Wynter’s vision of the full and complex human.

OPENING WEEK PROGRAMS SCHEDULE 03 AUGUST 2022, WEDNESDAY
19:00/22:00 – Exhibition Opening
21:00 – Do They Hesitate To Eat With You — Reading by Rajyashri Goody
22:00/02:00 – DJ sets — MORENXXX, Fadescha

05 AUGUST, 2022, FRIDAY
18:00/19:00 – Testimony and Community in HIV Care — Conversation with Eli Moon & Shaunak Mahbubani
19:00/20:00 – Living and Loving in a Caste Society — Keynote by Dhrubo Jyoti
20:00/21:00 – Akin To The Hurricane — Performance by Jesús Hilario-Reyes in collaboration with Exael

Opening: 03 August 2022, 19:00 – 22:00
Exhibition: 04 – 30 August, Tuesday – Saturday, 12:00 – 19:00

Oyoun
Lucy-Lameck-Straße 32
Berlin, Germany