What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe? The latest issue of Chimurenga provides alternatives to prevailing educational pedagogy. Through fiction, essays, interviews, poetry, photography and art, contributors examine and redefine rigid notions of essential knowledge.
Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it. All entries are regrouped under subjects such as body parts, language, grace, worship and news (from the other side), numbers, parents, police and many more. Through a classification system that is both linear and thematic, the textbook offers multiple entry points into a curriculum that focuses on the un-teachable and values un-learning as much as it’s opposite.
Inside: Amiri Baraka waxes poetic on the theoretics of Be-Bop; Coco Fusco flips the CIA’s teaching manual for female torturers; Karen Press and Steve Coleman instruct in folk-dancing; Dambudzo Marechera proposes a “guide to the earth”; Dominique Malaquais designs the museum we won’t build; through self-portraits Phillip Tabane and Johnny Dyani offer method to the Skanga (black music family); and Winston Mankunku refuses to teach.
Other contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Akin Adesokan, Isoje Chou, Sean O’Toole, Pradid Krishen, E.C. Osundu, Salim Washington, Sefi Atta, Ed Pavlic, Neo Muyanga, Henri-Michel Yere, Medu Arts Ensemble, Aryan Kaganof, Khulile Nxumalo and Walter Mosley amongst others. Cover by Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani.
Beyond The Chrysalis was curated by Nneoma Angela Okorie in 2023. Nneoma is a Nigerian curator and researcher. She was the ARAK Collection second 2023 Curatorial Residency Fellowship Recipient. To forge a personal visual language is to interrogate the world unrestrained by the boundaries of what is customary, a crucial signifier, and of real consequence to the rally for the representation of pluralities. Beyond The Chrysalis marks the non-linear paths, the detours, and the overlapping phases of an artist's practice. To enter this space is also to be aware of the three accomplices relevant to this inquiry: the artistic language, the approach to making, and the trails that meander through the recesses of an artist's imagination. The publication presents thirty-two works by three artists; Gor Soudan, Maliza Kiasuwa, and Khalid Abdel Rahman. What is critical is the interrogation of each artist's approach, dwelling on a framework indicative of a changing climate that situate art from the continent within broader frameworks, relevant to our time (post-colonial) rather than isolating it as a static object of study. The artists have developed distinct vocabularies which present a counter-narrative rooted in their lived experiences and identity to assert their agency.