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Here I want to bring the expression used in one of the keynote lectures at the opening to describe this as the wonderful manifestations of an effet papillon, a ‘butterfly effect’, hoping for big changes in due time. Some of us present in Berlin that week-end knew each other while others we had never met before, yet it was magical to come together and tell each other stories about why it was important to be there and how Bonaventure or Savvy was point d’ancrage which brought us together. The reopening of HKW was proof for me that an institution could feel like home; that the word community could translate into a reality and a practice.

We came together there, all coming from different continents, gravitating towards the same energy and happiness that extended outside of the comfort zones that defined and restricted our existence. It was not about a country, a tribe, a religion, a race, a gender, or any sexuality. Our presence there was about our shared pluriverse. We all come from different fields : dance, cinema, literature, visual arts, music, and although we do not speak the same language, we breathe in unison. We were there for one reason: the belief that there was actually a possibility of being together fully in our differences, uniqueness and plurality. It was about us, our common history, our shared present and the decision to build the future of our dreams which of course was also reflected in this institution, which was presenting its first iteration of the directions it would chose under the leadership of Bonaventure.

In his opening speech, Bonaventure invited us to reflect on the question What to do with the world? It was a question which could not be thought of without thinking of his follow up question What to do with the world we’ve inherited?

In his opening speech, Bonaventure invited us to reflect on the question What to do with the world? It was a question which could not be thought of without thinking of his follow up question What to do with the world we’ve inherited?

HKW’s new team inherited a house full of history to reckon with. A house recognised as one of the most important cultural institutions in Western Europe with a name that conveys its heavy task: House of World Cultures. Since its foundation in 1989, the house has gone through various changes and reconfigurations that were mainly triggered by the political and social state of Berlin and Germany specifically and the world in general. What could be a house of world cultures in this contemporary troubled world? And what do cultures mean in a world that is facing an unprecedented series of crises and wars?

Inheriting the House of World Cultures, as clearly stated by the team in many of their statements during that opening weekend, is dealing with the colonial and postcolonial history both of Germany and of the world. It is acknowledging the multiple political shifts happening around the world and questioning the meaning of independence and sovereignty. It is addressing the unequal distribution of and access to resources like water or land, dealing with the invasion of the Ukraine, as well as many other wars around the world, and critically analyzing local and global discourses and practices around migration and post-migration.

The deconstruction of each of these issues to understand their causes and find ways to repair them, reveals in fact that the world we are inhabiting is plural and collective, whether we want to recognise it or not. Can the world we dream of be reflected in the work of an institution – even if that institution proclaims to practice hospitality and conviviality, transcending all types of differences, working against all forms of discrimination and hate?

The first day of the festive opening weekend kicked off with When We Gather, a powerful renewal ritual by María Magdalena Campos-Pons that was part of the exhibition O Quilombismo. Campos-Pons summoned ancestral beings and knowledge to the space through a procession that involved chants and movements. This moment was important for the proper welcoming of other spirits that would embody the foundations of the new HKW.

When We Gather is a powerful renewal ritual by María Magdalena Campos-Pons which summoned ancestral beings and knowledge to the space through a procession that involved chants and movements

In line with this idea, the new team reconfigured and re-conceptualized, re-aestheticised, reclaimed and resignified the physicial building as well. Each public space in the building was named after a different woman that marked the history of the world and who has contributed in any way to the betterment of it, yet who each has for different reasons been erased and/or invisiblised from it. Although no wall had been physically broken the symbolic process of naming finds its whole sense in creating new significations and thus new spaces. As an African woman, I felt a sense of pride walking for instance through the Miriam Makeba Auditorium. Makeba,often lovingly referred to as Mama Africa, is an important figure from South-Africa who was a famous singer and anti-apartheid activist. Walking further, I cross the Paulette Nardal Terrasse, exit through the Nawal El Saadawi Entrance and wander through the Semra Ertan garden.

The first exhibition on view in the ‘new’ HKW is O Quilombismo: Of Resisting and Insisting. Of Flight as Fight. Of Other Democratic Egalitarian Political Philosophies, which will be in view until 17.9.2023. On the HKW website, it is described as ‘a research undertaking, an exhibition, workshops, and a series of performances that invite artists, activists, scholars, and people from other walks of life to imagine new forms of cultural and political resistance through diverse emancipation projects, past and present.’ Drawing from Brazilian artist, author, and politician Abdias Nascimento, the philosophy of Quilombismo was altogether a call for communion, a chant to resist the spaces that hold us prisoners in a monolithic world, an invitation to step out of the borders that prevent us from entering into a relationship with others. The exhibition could be described as conceived in a pluriverse, in the sense that it brings together a large number of artists and collectives from different mediums (music, performing and visual arts) activists, storytellers, scholars and researchers, who reflect and offer alternative forms of being in a colonial, capitalist and patriarchal world.

How have ideas of anti-imperialism manifested and emerged around the world in the past and today, and how would this affect the futures ? These questions form the conceptual framework in which the curators have gathered a rich selection of paintings, installations, videos, drawing, and performative works, were have been spread around the different spaces of the house.

The exhibition design, conceptualised by Bel Xavier, Fernande Bodo with the curatorial coordination of Cosmin Costinas and Paz Guevara, was inspired by the painting Oxumare Ascende (1972) by Abdias Do Nascimento and the philosophy of the Quilombismo. Spanning a space of around 3000 squared metres, the exhibition is conceived around the idea of freedom and celebration of life which is put forward by the Quilombismo. Formally, the exhibition design mirrors these ideas, featuring a floor plan through which the public can move freely with almost no exhibition walls. The two only walls in the exhibition have, when viewed from above, been shaped according the the Adinkra symbol for the urge to create and safeguard a community.

The works in the exhibition have been arranged in a way that allows them to be in conversation with the public and each other. Take, for instance, the floor mural Kubatana (togetherness / unity / connecting / touching / holding) (2023) by Zimbabwean-born visual artist and educator Nontsikelelo Mutiti, which snakes across the floor of the whole exhibition space. With this floor painting, Mutiti explores the technology of braiding, its visual aesthetic and its hidden symbology. The painting features a complex braid pattern made of multiple smaller braids which have again been braided together. Above the painting, various works hang from the ceiling, reaching down towards the braids. One of these works is Transatlantic Stargate (2023), an indigo-coloured textile installation by Antonio José Guzman and Iva Jankovic, which hangs gracefully from the ceiling.

The exhibition continues outside with a number of works among which a newly produced open air pavillon which serves as a space in which people can come together to contest and challenge eurocentric cartographies. Other works I encounter outside include E PAIN ME (2023), a large sculptural tapestry made of historical hand-woven fabrics and synthetic cotton by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama; You will forge paths beyond your grandmother’s imaginings (2023), by Nigerian artist Temitayo Ogunbiyi, an installation in the form of a playground structure that also provides space for interaction with different bodies and movements; and a series of mural works by Brazilian artist and designer Alberto Pitta, which includes Ogum que são sete [Ogum who are seven] (2023) and Moradismo: estéticas de quilombo [Moradismo: aesthetics of the quilombo] (2023). The series features colorful portraits of confident figures surrounded by symbols, who embody spiritual guardians of knowledges and carers of communities.

In the foyer, a spectacular commissioned mural work by composer, artist, author, performer, instrumentalist, poet, researcher and scholar of African music, Tanka Fonka functions as a cleansing ritual. Imagined through the spirit of compassion, The Cosmogenic Interconnectedness ‘How Did We Talk Before the Roman Alphabet?’ The Picto-Sonic Dialogues I, (2023) puts together in a visual abstract language the history of different philosophical schools of thought that have been followed since the dawn of humanity. Spanning time, places, people from Bamenda in Cameroon to Steven Hawking and Benjamin Franklin, from biology to architecture and computer science, the work is an invitation by Tanka to decode all symbols taken from different knowledge systems. The work seems to emphasise that we are all made of multiplicities of spaces, times, histories and cosmologies.

In a recent call-out to western institutions that I posted on social media, I noted the fact that many non-Western art practitioners are often sidelined because their works do not correspond with a certain expected style that has been silently but collectively agreed upon. Artists from Africa, South America, Asia and other places are often still looked down upon today, as they are perceived to differ too much from a mostly white and imperialist norm which is centered around westen ideas. I consider the re-opening of HKW as an important step towards a Europe in which all different experiences of the world are considered equal and other perspectives are seen as an opportunity for learning. worlds we have been inhabiting and that we do not know of and from which we can learn from.