Sustaining the Otherwise : Practicing Freedom and Refusal
Practicing Freedom and Refusal draws inspiration from Kaiama L. Glover’s book A Regarded Self, which conveys ‘a sustained reflection about refusal.’1 Her perspectives on practices of freedom and refusal offer an ideal vantage point from which to engage with the work of activists, thinkers, and artists who explore practices of freedom and refusal as forms of resistance, restitution and sustenance. Rephrasing Glover, this exhibition and public program center practices of freedom and community, as seen in the work of artists who are bound (un)comfortably together by a shared set of politics, realities and horizons. Taking cues from Glover’s reading of the notion of refusal invites us to engage with the importance of similarly radical concepts and language, including, but not limited to, disorder, self-love, self-possession, self-defense, self-preservation, and self-regard in addition to active processes of disturbing, unsettling, dissenting, dismantling, uprooting, and undoing.
The practice of freedom and how it relates to the community, as well as the importance of solidarity between individuals who share similar attitudes, politics, and imaginaries are ideas that highlight the essence of Sustaining the Otherwise as a whole, and this exhibition specifically. With that in mind, Practicing Freedom and Refusal positions the work of artists AYO, Masimba Hwati, Christian Nyampeta, Adeju Thompson, and Helena Uambembe as distinctly shaped by the nuances and complexities of the dual action of practicing freedom and refusal.
The exhibition serves as a reminder that restitution is not only about returning cultural heritage objects, but also about reconfiguring, rehabilitating and complicating the discourse around decoloniality, restitution and reparations, and sitting with the discomfort of those propositions. Through this collaborative project and exhibition we aim to stretch the notion of restitution and repair to give space for all the lifeforms and stories that animate the lifeworld of both the objects and individuals . It’s important to keep in mind that cultural heritage objects sit in a space of contested, entangled relationality. Rethinking restitution implies that one has to question, debate, feel uncomfortable, and to really fight about (and for) the objects and what they represent in relation to the past, present and future.