Event for BIPOC as part of the finissage
no language barrier

Register via anmeldung@ngbk.de

Queering Black Church Narratives will explore the language and symbol of The Black Church. Otis Mensah and Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi will respond to the biblical text and parable and each attendee is invited to freely share their own interpretation and experience based on culturally specific reference points. The focus on Christianity as the hegemonic religion within Western Europe acts as a starting point and framework for subversion, honouring the survivors and victims of missionary colonisation pre-19th century, exploring notions of worship, church traditions, and reclaiming-symbol.

Anglicised notions of Christianity remain dominant across Western society and contemporary culture, which often hinders the nuance and flourishing-wholeness of non-monolithic Black identities in the present and in the retelling of history. Queering Black Church Narratives, therefore, takes place as an instrument of reclamation; documenting and eternising identities of Blackness & queerness, past and present, honouring Black life that is divergent from the white Christian gaze. The event strives to create a safe space for conversation, expression, retelling, and creative experimentation.

Otis Mensah is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist, writer and curator exploring the aesthetic fabric of language and cadence to evoke ethereal portraits of the body, family and notions of home. Drawing from a rich lineage of Black musicality, Otis’ poetic-sonic practice pulls multidimensional sound and text from archival material and reflections on dreaming and nature.

Concerned with an Abstractionist approach to language, Otis’ practice draws vitally from the likes of Norman Lewis and Jack Whitten, examining vivid experimentation with the materiality of paint as technique and lens for approaching text. Otis’ writing exalts the materiality of words to reveal a larger emotional landscape. By queering and subverting biblical language and parable, Otis exercises magical realism in their work, muddying the waters of memory and archival material with myth and portrayals of a Black diaspora.

Following their tenure as the first Poet Laureate of Sheffield, UK, Otis has had a diverse calibre of experience in contemporary art both as artist and curator

Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [aka crazinisT artisT] is a trans woman with the pronoun sHit if not She. Va-Bene lives in Kumasi, Ghana but works internationally as a multidisciplinary “artivist”, curator, philanthropist, artvangelist and a mentor across several countries. She is the founder and artistic director of crazinisT artisT studiO (TTO), Our Railway Cinema Gallery (ORCG), perfocraZe International Artists Residency (pIAR) and Trans African Ambassadors Network (TAAN). All of which aimed at radicalising the arts and promoting exchange between international and local artists, activists, researchers, curators, and critical thinkers. As a performer and installation artist, crazinisT investigates gender stereotypes, prejudices, queerness, identity politics and conflicts, sexual stigma, and their consequences for marginalised groups or individuals. With rituals and a gender-fluid persona, she employs her own body as a thought-provoking tool in performances, photography, video, and installations – ‘life-and-live-art’ – confronting issues such as disenfranchisement, injustice, violence, objectification, internalised oppression, anti blackness, systemic indoctrination, and many more.