Black Joy as Cultural Resistance

On Celebration and Visibility in When We See Us

The exhibition When We See Us at the Kunstmuseum Basel celebrates a century of Black figurative painting, offering a sweeping homage to Black Joy, positioned far beyond the aestheticized trauma and stereotyped suffering so often imposed upon Black subjects in European cultural institutions. More than a collection of artworks, the exhibition offers a curatorial and affective experience: an invitation to encounter joy as a force of resistance, intimacy, and self-definition. The title, When We See Us, a deliberate echo of Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us, already signals a reversal of gaze. Where they cast their vision upon Black life, this exhibition turns the lens inward: when we see us is both an epistemic act and a political claim. It is a reorientation of visual sovereignty. Curated by Tandazani Dhlakama and Koyo Kouoh, the exhibition brings together over 200 works by artists from across the Pan-African and diasporic spectrum, mapping 100 years of Black figuration through scenes of leisure, love, spirituality, domesticity, and collective rest. The exhibition is not the representation of Blackness as absence, brokenness, or spectacle. Rather, it is what Stuart Hall would call a “politics of representation” that insists on multiplicity, affect, and self-making. [1] Black Joy, in this exhibition, is not treated as an emotion alone but as a methodology, a visual grammar of presence, survival, and imagination. Drawing on Hall, we might say this is not about “finding the real” but about showing how identity is constructed, felt, and claimed in the act of celebration itself. [2] The exhibition’s refusal to center trauma resonates deeply with bell hooks’ call for an “oppositional gaze:” a way of seeing that resists dominance and reclaims the terms of looking. [3] Here, the gaze is not merely returned, it is shared. One sees and is seen. This mutuality is enacted not just through portraiture but through the spatial choreography of the exhibition: vibrant color palettes, layered listening zones, moments of stillness, and warmth. In such an environment, joy is not a frivolous affect but a quiet demand, a mode of staying alive and staying seen. As a biracial cultural researcher working at the intersection of visual studies, digital ethnography, and urban Black cultural spaces, I approached the show not only as an observer but also as someone deeply attuned to the textures and politics of Black self-representation. My viewing was not neutral. It was embodied, relational, charged. Moving through…

Envisioning Vengeance

Rebellious Indigeneity, Gender and Genre in Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona

Throughout the western hemisphere in recent years, there has been a notable increase in fictional texts (novels, television, movies) by Black, Indigenous, and artists of color—many of whom identify as queer and/or women—that fall within the category of the “speculative,” i.e. fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Some examples include the novels La Mucama de Oricunlé by the Dominican writer Rita Indiana, and Los Hijos de la Diosa Huracán by the Cuban-American writer Daina Chaviano; the Brazilian film As Boas Maneiras, directed by Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas; the U.S. Black Panther films, directed by Ryan Coogler; the Mexican film Selva Trágica, directed by Yulene Olaizola; and many others. [16] All these examples either directly or indirectly address the legacies of colonialism and slavery, drawing upon genre conventions like time travel, magic, and reanimation, and exploring the possibilities of posthuman bodies like cyborgs, human-animal hybrids, and the undead for expressing these historical phenomena and their resonances in the present. Given its broad impact and cultural importance, film as a medium is unique in its ability to critique essentialist notions of race, gender, sexuality, and social identity through these posthuman representations. Classic horror is a cinematic genre particularly concerned with soliciting strong affective responses from its audience through depictions of monstrous non- and post-humans, making it well equipped to transmit emotional charges based on historical traumas. While these traumas have often been ignored by official narratives, such as those expressed in written documentation and political speech, horror cinemas can provide audiences access to them in ways that circumvent dominant representations. In sociohistorical conditions that seek to negate the histories of certain groups, audiovisual productions can thus function as indispensable tools for recuperating stories that have been silenced. Here I will examine the Guatemalan film La Llorona [17] and its contributions to the horror genre, focusing on how its depiction of monstrosity reworks a global genre into a local context in order to connect more effectively with Guatemalan audiences while also achieving a wider viewership. La Llorona, written and directed by Jayro Bustamante, was strategically marketed as a horror film in order to get audiences to the theater, and it was later released through the online horror media platform Shudder. It reinterprets the myth of La Llorona (well known throughout Central and South America as the vengeful, weeping woman crying for the death of her children) as the motherland of Guatemala crying for…

A Poetic Reading of Permaculture in Three Helical Aesthetic Plans

Permaculture is an emergent agricultural design system based on principles of ethics of the human co-existence with nature. The term derives from the definition of permanent agriculture and it was first coined in the 1970s by the Australian scholars Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Its definition was soon amplified by the authors in order to incorporate the comprehension of permanent culture as an interdependent process of the design of agricultural systems. Beyond co-existing with nature, human beings are argued to be an integrant part of it, in a system of interdependence which affects both and which can be perceived in patterns of spiral and organic processes of relation. In face of current, not completely new, but definitely undeniable states of emergency of environmental catastrophes, climate change, and the abuse of non-renewable natural resources, investigations about emergent models for the human interaction with nature, such as permaculture, become crucial for ethical reconsiderations of human behaviour in moments of such emergency. Furthermore, not only is the emergent characteristic of permaculture as a possible innovative agri-cultural system worth investigating, but also — and, in this case, more importantly — the unconventional aesthetic paths that emerge from it are incredibly fruitful for reflecting upon such states of emergency. …

Love as Practice of Solidarity

Of Peripheral Bodies, Embodied Justice and Associated Labor

On the eve of my third late spring in Frankfurt, there is the lightness and ease of being not there but here. The lindens in front of the windows give comfort, but I’m yearning for the sweetly pungent fragrance of their Banja Luka sisters. I will not be smelling them this June, or perhaps ever again for that matter, the borders have been closed again due to the corona pandemic. Their smell is from elsewhere and it won’t be going anywhere — their labors are lost.

The Securopolis

(Re)assembling Surveillance, Resilience, and Affect

This paper explores the idea that modern urban life is being re-assembled. It supposes that such a (re)assemblage encourages a particular configuration — which I have dubbed ‘the securopolis.’ The securopolis is a form of urban life in which humans enact a ‘watchfulness’ (i.e. surveillance) combined with a ‘readiness for the worse’ (i.e. resilience). It is also argued here that the securopolis is not simply a model of a secure city, rather it is increasingly an influence on the underlying habitus […]