this is a love poem at EXILE

Artists: Autumn Knight, Mona Benyamin, Rosa-Johan Uddoh, Tanoa Sasraku

Exhibition title: this is a love poem

Curated by: Cindy Sissokho

Venue: EXILE, Vienna, Austria

Date: September 4 – October 16, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and EXILE, Berlin

We are happy to participate in the 2021 edition of curated by, the gallery festival with international curators in Vienna, with a group exhibition curated by Cindy Sissokho.

this is a love poem, is a group exhibition that reclaims the language of humour through a Black feminist perspective as found articulated in contemporary performance and poetry. It offers a response on how political satire is an unapologetic and poetic tool for resistance and laughter, a measure to provoke unconscious discomfort from the receiver.

The exhibition allows us to question how, through time, the Black body has fed colonial imaginaries within comedy through inappropriate representations, roles and caricatures. It is a statement of how it is reappropriated today as a virulent tool for testimony, shifting narratives from mainstream to traditional formats.

From a theatrical reappropriation of the figure of Pierrot the clown, to a TV show of irrational improvisation, the exhibition moves away from the historically hegemonic forms of satire. It is

through complexified narratives, in which the performative Black body exists, that it offers nuanced critiques on colonialism, nationalism, identity, and belonging.

Awkward gestures, exaggerated facial expressions, the body as a prop are all a part of the staging of humor with the virulent words that accompanies it. A virulent love language.

Participating artists: Autumn Knight, Mona Benyamin, Rosa-Johan Uddoh, and Tanoa Sasraku.

The exhibition will present works both inside the gallery space and online with the parallel launch of the new platform EXILE TV.

→EXILE TV

→this is a love poem, (extended exhibition text, PDF, 2 pages)

→curated by