ARO
ARÓ ARE BOLURIN ADEDIPE, ANNE-LISE AGOSSA, RICHARD AINA, KHALED AL- BASHIR, ZHANIYA ALIMZHANOVA, JUMANAH BAWAZIR, TOBIAS CAI, LETICIA DADALTO, IMAN DATOO, ALIA A.O. DURDA, NOUR HAMADE, KASANG KAJANG, SARI KING, YANA KUSHPITOVSKA, JANE LING, MARIA MAJAPAHIT, FERIAL MASSOUD, JABIR MOHAMED, DARIA MOUSSAVI, VIVIAN OLAWEPO, RUSSELL ROYER, SHERIF SHEHATA, IFEOLUWASEMI SOMEFUN, SOFIA TABET, AUDE TOLLO, MAX TURNHEIM, ASHIRAI ZEYN
FOUR IMPORTANT TERMS THAT ARE TO BE ADDED TO THE AA FILES GLOSSARY
Aró in Yoruba means blue indigo dye. The colour blue is symbolic in various ethnic cultures around the world, and has an innate duality; rare in nature, but rich with the experience of the sky and water – nature’s elusive gifts that link us to both the known and the unknown, the mysterious and the candid. Aró seeks to dismantle the outdated, imposed, binary approach to architectural education that passively preserves and perpetuates racism, exclusivity and inaccessibility. Aró welcomes non-binary modes of thinking, inclusive methods of interaction and modes of practice that truly reflect societal ethnic diversity within and around London.
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AFRICAN FUTURISM What would an archive liberated from the shackles of the past look like? An archive liberated from the limited boundaries of words, museums and dusty boxes, in which the multiplicity of African narratives is set free from the stereotypical, oppressive paradigm of backwardness and the modernist ‘hypertrophy of the present’?1 We long for the emancipation of paradigms; for the moment when our art manages to live up to its speculative capacity. We long for a time when liberation will mean the full expression of the richness of our potential. We are now affirming the conditional; the exploration of the future is not so far-fetched, but intimately linked to the past and present.2 African Futurism started as a movement and a philosophy, but has evolved to reflect the broader necessity to shift the hierarchical cultural paradigm in general. ART IS KNOWLEDGE, KNOWLEDGE IS ART, AND SO IS CULTURE3 Art doesn’t exist to be scrutinised. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum, separate from the banal, but is instead a form of everyday, speculative philosophy. Art thus refuses decontextualisation and fetishisation, yet we are perpetually exposed to a ‘colonial library’ that reinforces a violent epistemic paradigm – a blatantly limited way of creating, distributing, consuming and understanding knowledge. For the archive to fully belong to us, it would need to reflect a discourse and ideology that express our material life within our own socio-political context. The first step towards subverting this oppressive paradigm lies in the explicit comprehension of time – a concept that is inherently politicised. African Futurism conceives of the future through speculation; narrative becomes an instrument by which to confirm the conditional. Abandoning linear time is necessary in order to build a much more fluid perception of temporality.4 By doing so, we can grab the future and mould it as we wish, while transcending the various unaccomplished processes of emancipation. A TEMPORAL, HORIZONTAL SOLIDARITY The future’s waters are troubled; uncertainties cast a seemingly dark shadow over the African continent. The actual, systemic nature of oppression makes it difficult to imagine true emancipation within the borders of separate countries.5 We are therefore reclaiming our own history and the creative power to speculate on it by inventing a scheme of historic, reciprocal recognition: the archival circle. Our new system of signification would begin to reconfigure societies accordingly.6 Outdated forms of governance and social organisation would not be strictly bound to the nation state, thus reviving and renewing the ways in which we relate to each other as a consequence. The absurdity of the scramble for Africa would be exacerbated. A NEW PAN-AFRICANISM The violence of fabricated national identities still deeply scars the African continent. But its borders seem more porous today, enabling the liberation of creative potential and the redefinition of the ways in which our temporal relations to one another are physically outlined. Seemingly old ideologies are emerging again dressed in a new skin. A panAfricanist philosophy would instead shed itself of an alien definition of sovereignty that is only peripherally related to individual nation states. And what about the diaspora? ‘Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.’7
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1 Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr, Politique Des Temps: Imaginer les Devenirs Africains (Paris: Philippe Rey, 2019), pp 174–190. 2 Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr, op cit, pp 7–10. 3 African art, more specifically. See Mary H. Nooter, Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals (New York: Museum for African Art, 1993). 4 Felwine Sarr, Afrotopia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), pp 70–79. 5 Souleymane Bachir Diagne, ‘Faire Humanité Ensemble et Ensemble Habiter la Terre’, lecture at Université de Nantes, 10 July 2019. 6 The customary guild system seems like a propitious canvas for a new and speculative archival system. Guild members are masters in their own, unique fields of expertise, and thus reflect accessible yet mysterious forms of knowledge that are rooted in the understanding of particular social groups and their respective land, while still being birthed in the artificial realm of culture. 7 See Joseph Conrad, ‘The Secret Sharer’, in Harper’s Magazine, August and September (1910).
VIVIAN OLAWEPO AND AUDE TOLLO (ARÓ)
THE ARCHIVAL CIRCLE Mimouna clutched in one hand a piece of compressed soil; in the other was a small, tube-like object from which a microscopic thread was coming out at regular intervals. She held it high above her head and, closing one eye, she weighed the object’s proportions. A dark shadow softly dimmed the interior of the wagon – a shoal of fish was obstructing the window on the Indian Ocean side, while the opposite side remained illuminated by the lighter blue of the Atlantic. Holding the object above her head for one last time, she turned it between her fingers. A light smile floated on her lips. Its delicacy was striking; small electric circuits writhed through the thin structure. Satisfied, she deftly placed it between two huge water containers. Light passed through it. The electro-osmosis circuit was equipped with another connecter. The train seamlessly followed the natural thread that separated the two oceans. Contemplating the osmosis generator, she moved to the next wagon, exhausted, with sweat beading on her forehead. She took a miniature calabash out of her pocket and, with her right foot, broke it on the floor to create a Kalenka – a holographic drawing. A series of pointed symbols spread out in front of her eyes; a 3D ‘work of art’. Only she had the ability to understand them, and each place represented on the drawing contained footage of ceremonies, animated artefacts, paintings and instruments. The media resonated within her in so many different ways. Every one captured a set of experiences that were unique to her. A point on the far left of the Kalenka flashed. Chants and instruments slowly filled her ears, making her crane her neck to gaze out of the window. Outside, a thin blue sky overpowered the dense ocean. Sun flooded into the wagon. Houses sprouted on the horizon and slowly filled the landscape. A loud thud on the window distracted her; flying vendors were always following the train dangerously closely. She hurried to the window to buy doughnuts. In broken Xhosa, she asked the seller: “How much?” “10 WAE for 5 doughnuts, my child.” “5 WAE, you mean?” The lady kissed her teeth, amused, and rolled her eyes. “You children from the west always think you know more. 7 WAE, and no less.” “Thank you.”
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She ate the glazed, brown doughnuts in one bite. Her lips glistened, as if she had applied a thick layer of shea butter. “The Kalenka!”, she remembered. This time, a loud thud reverberated throughout the whole train. Her body flinched as the wagon she was in took flight. Looking down, she could see each section splintering off on its own journey to a different corner of the continent at the price of 1 WAE. Mimouna, as a sociocultural-electro engineer, was actively participating in the continent-wide effort to create a universal, yet personal, archival circle of knowledge. Her Kalenka was richer than others. ‘Knowledge is a shared secret.’ It was engrained, experienced and built through contact with objects and people; by being witnessed and felt. The blinking lights of the wagon became more aggressive as it landed. All of the doors lifted, allowing access to the osmosis machine. She hurried to the Generator, then extended a tube out toward the black Volta, the machine gained pace. She began to polish her borrowed Gurunsi flute. The funeral had not yet started, and she would have time to give it back to the guild master who made it. The flute contained a microprocessor that could register a melody and repeat it in an infinite loop, as it did during rare secret ceremonies. On the Kalenka, this animated object played a game of revealing, disclosing and hiding. Carefully crafted, it created a tangible sense of secrecy around itself; a multilayered act of abstraction leading to the experiential appropriation of the artefact and the mystic knowledge that surrounded it. Inevitably, this circle of knowledge creates a new and exciting canvas for individual definition in a community with extended boundaries. African Futurism is emancipation through a temporal process. Within this process, the oppressive narrative of the past is overwritten, which leads to the mitigation of alienation. African Futurism questions how we relate to each other; it encourages a temporal solidarity throughout the continent. African Futurism can lift the reductive stereotypes that the diaspora sometimes possesses regarding the continent. It can encourage a horizontal solidarity and question what it means to give back; to remove oppression from a narrative; to reimagine a creative way of relating to one another, beyond the strict confines of the nation state.
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EXILE
Exile for Palestinians comes in multiple forms; as does the notion of ةدوعلاAl-Awda (Return). The question of return has always been present in Palestinian political expression, literature and theory. Though representative of a collective ambition, it is also an individual act; we return to Palestine, after all, as persons. How we define ةدوعلا, therefore, is something that we should reflect on as individuals. ةدوعلا, in my mind, entails an absolute opposition to today’s reality. It recognises the coloniser precisely in the image of their inevitable downfall, because return is only possible when an end is brought to the colonial reality of Palestine and the Apartheid law it is currently subject to. Palestinians, wherever they may be, have a right to self-determination within their land. My understanding of ةدوعلاaligns with the collective struggle for Palestine, in which values of justice and equality for its people are absolute. My grandmother’s tale and memory is foundational in the paradigm of this return; the ‘key’ to her home is its symbol. The black and white photograph of Stantom Street in Haifa is the memory that I cherish, and the blue in the sea of the city is the colour that I wish to reclaim.1 ةدوعلا, however, also contains a place of metaphor in my view, best explained by it being a return to that ‘thing’ which transcends all of the definitions assigned to it;2 a dream of perpetual self-exile, opposing all that is solid. It realises that Palestine can not and should not be written, lest it lose its ‘thingness’. Here I realise the need for a second exile from the Palestine of my grandmother’s tale, which can no longer exist today and can neither contain my reality nor that which exists around it. The photograph is shattered into the bewildering spectrums of colour. Haifa begins to speak also of Damascus, Beirut and Amman, as well as Montreal and London, as it meets my exiled self. This return to Palestine encapsulates the eternal resistance required to protect the ‘thing’ that should never be commodified.
1
2
Haifa is the city in Palestine from which my grandparents were exiled in 1948. I had never been able to enter it. ‘The Thing’ here comes from the term used by Ghassan Kanafani in his play ‘The Prophet and The Hat’.
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Jus Soli: Right to citizenship via soil Jus Sanguinis: Right to citizenship via blood. What if your blood is soiled by another land? And your soil refuses your blood? Like how an aggressive immune response rejects a foreign body. No immunosuppressive drug will ever teach that soil to accept. No transfusion will wash the blood of its dirt. And though I have rights that are protected by the law Those rights were granted halfheartedly.
My parents were political refugees, and had to leave Iran after the 1979 revolution. Some years later, I was born in Berlin. My parents did their best to compensate, not knowing when or if we could ever go home. I grew up with stories about this beautiful, idyllic, faraway land where I was from but couldn’t go to, the way my parents tried to remember it. They surrounded me with a sense of (be)longing through cultural practices like speaking only Persian at home, traditional food, music, dance, literature, pictures of beautiful landscapes and ancient architecture. Sometimes relatives visited from Iran with souvenirs. I remember the excitement of holding an Iranian doll rather than a Barbie, or the smell of herbs from my mom’s hometown or pistachios from my dad’s. When I was nine years old, a new political climate enabled us to go to Iran, so my parents decided to move back within a couple of months. All those stories and pictures were real – Iran is beautiful. But reality is a bit more complex; familiarity coupled with unfamiliarity when fantasy suddenly met reality in a new context. I overcame it with time, and I was lucky. Not every exiled child has the opportunity to return, and many are left with a sense of (be)longing to or for a place that they can never go.
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KHALED AL- BASHIR, TOBIAS CAI, ALIA A.O. DURDA, JANE LING, DARIA MOUSSAVI AND IFEOLUWASEMI SOMEFUN (ARÓ)
Always too noticeable, too loud, too colourful So I cover myself in white blankets Mute myself and I become all that I can see. White blankets, white sheets, The soft coverings of authenticity.
EXILE IN NUMBERS 0 9,659 26 2 16 36 1 2 13.95 1 1 354 6.5 4 3 1
10 18 8 x 5 4 9.00 1 2 5 150 60 2 1 1 1
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GMT after kilometres foreign letters and ways of counting numbers degrees of atmospheric difference Wentworth Way, a spare room of Bed with People £ weekly child benefit new name of syllable to remember to respond to days in the lunar calendar hours of school pieces of salted seaweed in a lunchbox that grossed out people savoury pie for a birthday instead of a cake because no one understands the label minutes of after-school British television yielding dictionary definitions on a cm lined page ads circled in the newspaper for jobs at am Saturday morning paper round every Sunday before we learned to read the paper years of learning how to speak to make calls to the council to translate for mum Hong Kong dollars for -minute, long-distance calls to people on the other side of the world languages compressed into alphabet tongue almost forgotten
The floor, the ceiling the wall Forged from judgement Ornamented in the style of exclusivity Presented as a room Experienced as a cage Prey treated like predator A protective measure for me or for they?
I would say that every three years we would move to a new house. The belongings we carried with us were the things that created our home; the elements of the house that were interchangeable and replaceable; the ones we were allowed to alter by the landlord, like carpets, curtains, pots, pans and bed sheets. These were the only constants in my life. And these were also the objects that my mother put pride in. In traditional Somali culture it was always the women who built the nomadic homes. There is a joke among Somalis that you can tell a Somali household by looking at their curtains. Our culture manifests itself in our people; in our mothers. It moves with us. Just as it did with the ancient nomads. There was always a sense of longing for my country. I had never visited it. But the feeling of always wanting to go back was cemented by the fact that we never fully settled down. Our walls were always bare, but our homes were draped with our mother’s love in the form of curtains, carpets and sweet incense. Our belongings here were always interchangeable, tangible and replaceable. The stories of a time before the civil war are the inherited memories I have of a place unknown to me. That place no longer exists.
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ARÓ
THIRD SPACE
The Third Space could be described as an ‘interstitial passage’ that is situated between cultures; between fixed identities and their implicit hierarchy. The ambiguity of cultural differences situates them in an unstable, uncertain border zone where these identities and their hierarchy are challenged, and where new articulations are settled. This is an experience that most us as members of Aró can relate to. We are the result of multiculturalism. The legacy of colonialism continually impedes the progress of the present, which challenges us to transcend our understanding of crosscultural relations. As hybrids, we are the result of an ambivalence; of cultures that embody opposing perceptions and dimensions. Like many others, we come from a place of exile, displacement and/or migration. Our generation was born at the dawn of a promise of a better, more equal future. Major movements that fought for civil rights seemed to have reached their conclusion, particularly regarding the global struggle for Black Liberation. We were fed the narrative that we now lived in an equal world. Paradoxically, however, over the same time period, the number of border wars was increasing around the world and were accompanied by anxieties and fears about the cultural, racial or ethnic ‘other’. Today, Nationalist movements are again on the rise, and people of marginalised backgrounds are now increasingly and with more intensity searching for their contemporary identities. W.E.B. Dubois coined the term double-consciousness as ‘an individual who lacks a unified sense of identity’. It is in this in this difference that a Third Space is created. An alternative to cultural diversity, it is the ambiguous point at which two or more cultures collide. It is deeply individual and unique to each person. It manifests a process of selfidentification that challenges our sense of history and culture as homogenising, unifying forces that are authenticated by the past and kept alive as national traditions by the People. We must not seek to rewrite our native narratives, but to utter new and fresh contemporary perspectives.
Historically, colonisers intentionally used forms of visual representation and/or misrepresentation of the ‘other’ to service their own ideologies. Such means were used to justify and legitimise the mistreatment, enslavement and dehumanisation of individuals and populations around the world. Amy Sall made a poignant comparison between the Camera and the Gun: ‘The Camera was used as a colonial weapon’, she stated. ‘It was used as a tool to further the Colonial Project.’ This process of misrepresentation continues today, particularly in the media, and continually serves to legitimise the poor treatment of people from marginalised backgrounds at a global scale. It is thus incredibly powerful for us to reclaim the agency of narrative by birthing new visual worlds, and to reclaim that which was an object of violence as an object of emancipation. In doing so, a divide between the traditions of a stable system of reference and the negation of that cultural certitude becomes clear. The articulation of new cultural meanings and strategies, in the political present, as a practice of domination and/or resistance is essential. We must tap into the power of our creativity and imagination to envision, design and build presents and futures without structures of oppression: dimensions with endless possibilities and opportunities in which to exist. More than anything, we need storytelling as a form of supplementary history, as it enables us to introduce nuance in places where it is not been permitted or welcomed. This is a way to object to the lack of representation by generating a feeling of investment and hence a feeling of belonging. In recent years, a new generation of young creatives who subscribe to their own definition of the Third Space has flourished. New visual worlds and movements have been born that challenge dominant narratives by offering a multitude of new ones. Noirwave, created in 2012 by Yannick Ilunga ‘Petite Noir’, and Rochelle ‘Rharha’ Nembhard, has pioneered an Afro-Punk movement that merges a new, genre-less sound and unexplored visual worlds to match. They seek to rebel against the closing of borders – tangible and intangible –and ‘move to the sound of cultural clashes’, travelling the world in search of stories, new and old, that can contribute to the ever-expanding definition and manifestation of both the movement and themselves. In parallel, Mowalola Ogunlesi launched her first collection in late 2017 through Fashion East, and immediately started making waves with her strong visuals and clothes. Her work is inspired by the Nigerian Petrolheads of the 1970s and 1980s and blurs the lines between genders, envisioning new ways for Africans to approach their relationships to gender and sexuality. The creation of a Third Space is a catalyst for change. Rochelle Nembhard, in her TEDx talk, titled ‘The Disruptive Power of the Third Space’, states: “The greatest power of our generation is the capability to disrupt. The greatest power of our opportunities is the power of our creativity. The place in which you fit will not exist until you create it.”
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ANNE-LISE AGOSSA AND NOUR HAMADE (ARÓ)
Petite Noir shot in Congo for the cover of his EP La Maison Noir / The Black house (2018). Creative Director: Rharha Nembhard. Photography: Kyle Weeks. Styled by: Gabrielle Kannemeyer.
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ARÓ
TRANSIENCE Transience today refers to a quality of temporary existence; of passing by; of ephemerality. Etymologically, the word is composed of ‘trans’, meaning ‘across’, and ‘ire’, meaning ‘to go’. To be transient means to exist between the words ‘cis’, ‘on this side of’, and trans, ‘across’. The transient exists within the act of crossing and not resting at any given destination. The Iban people are one of the many indigenous communities in Borneo. Young Iban men are sometimes visited in their dreams by the sibling deities Menjaya Manang Raja and Ini Inda. While asleep, the individual would see himself wearing a bekain, an item of clothing normally worn by women; with his hair is braided into a besanggol, a hairstyle normally sported by women, fully embodying the typical role of an Iban woman. The dream was a calling to become a manang bali, a gender nonconforming shaman, or else face suffering, illness or death.1 Upon waking, the man would be initiated into his new role. Arriving at the ceremony wearing men’s attire, a coconut would be split on his head to facilitate his entry into the spirit realm, wherein his mind could be cleansed by the spirits, who would impart him with their wisdom. Gold dust would be rubbed into his eyes to grant him the ability to see semengat (souls) and hantu (spirits), and barbs inserted into his fingers to enable him to catch them. His chest would be pierced by an arrow to soften his heart and open it up to compassion for those who are suffering. Once the newly initiated manang bali returned to ordinary reality, they would remove their male clothing, braid their hair and wear the bekain that they envisioned in their dream. They abandoned their past lives and lived socially as women, eventually marrying men. These shamans
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inhabited both the physical and spirit world equally, and were neither male nor female. Their unique ability to fluidly pass between and interact with multiple states was highly revered, as they are able to perform pelian, saut and nampok healing rituals and bring wisdom from the spirit world to their community. In contemporary society, manang bali no longer exist. Once regarded with esteem, they became a source of shame for the Iban people after contact with British colonists was established. The third gender category was ridiculed by Western anthropologists, and the Iban people learned to shun their spiritual healers. With the mass conversion of indigenous peoples in Borneo to Christianity and Islam, the spiritual practices of this community have now become rare. The loss of the manang bali has meant not only the loss of gender plurality in the culture, but also the loss of connection to the spirit realm and its wisdom. In Western societies, non-binary genders are perceived to have emerged relatively recently.2 However, they have existed for a long time in societies around the world. Many third gender people performed a social role as spiritual healers and shamans such as the manang bali, the Achnucek of the Kodiak people in Alaska and the Inkosi ygbatfazi of the amaZulu (Zulu) people of southern Africa. Many would be temporarily embodied during rituals such as لوخ (Khawal) in Egypt and კინტო (Kinto) in Georgia. In some cultures, third gender people were acknowledged to exist but did not have any specific social role, such as กะเทย (Kathoey) in Thailand, Quetho of Tewa People in North America and whakawahine of the Māori people in Aotearoa (New Zealand). The modern ascription of gender according to biological sex can in large part be attributed to the European Enlightment period, during which it became a common practice for artists and scientists to dissect cadavers and explore their interiors. Such endeavours found significant biological differences between the most commonly
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observed human bodies – male and female – and called into question the prevailing one-sex model, which asserted these were simply variations of the same sex. Hormone levels, brain size, body mass, bone structure, vein anatomy and every other aspect of the human body were divided into two categories: male and female. Variances outside of these standards, including trans and intersex bodies, were pathologised. The quantification of differences between the sexes, justified and administered by science as the hegemonic adjudicator of truth, enabled the assignation of roles within the new, industrialised society that was evolving in Europe at the time. Such differences had commonly been used to determine social responsibilities by civilisations before the Enlightenment, however it was at that point that intellectual capacity was attributed to internal, biological characteristics. As a consequence, a social hierarchy was created that determined who had access to education, citizenship, work and capital. As the colonial project developed throughout the 18th century, its impact spread across the globe. The two-sex model and, later, eugenics were used to justify gendered and racialised violence in the colonies and across Europe. Different genders and sexualities that exist outside of heteronormativity were criminalised. In the case of the English colonies in the African continent, Black bodies and Black culture were sexualised and used as a scientific ‘experiment’ in order to justify the subjugation of Black People. A notable example was the dehumanization of Saartije Baartman,3 who was paraded in freak shows around London and Europe because of the proportions of her body. After her death in 1815, parts of her body remained on display in a museum until 1974; Baartman was finally buried by her family only in 2002. With the development of new technologies throughout the 20th century, however, the binary understanding of gender and race upon which such violence was predicated
VIVIAN OLAWEPO AND AUDE TOLLO (ARÓ)
has been debunked, and intersex variations has been recognised as a third category of sex. Moreover, the diversity of hormone levels discovered even within each of the binary groups, female and male, emphasise that received gender roles are arbitrary – sex is independent from, and not part of, gender identity. Those who identify outside of binary gender norms embody transience. Transience in the form of gender fluidity was once normal, but has since been sidelined by an attempt to rationalise something that was never rational in the first place. The idea that third genders and non-binary and trans identities are a recent development that emerged from ‘the West’ is historically inaccurate. As a result of colonialism, we have lost not only our collective acceptance of non-binary gender categories in society, but also the traditional role that such people have played as teachers within communities. Transient beings who embody multiple social roles and connect the physical and spiritual realms are an essential source of wisdom, community building and political progression. The apparent re-emergence of trans and non-binary identities in Western society is both a reclamation of authentic ways of being and a protest against the hegemonic normalisation of bodies.
1 See Joseph N. Goh, ‘A DivinelyInspired Gender: The Manang Bali Shamans Of Sarawak’, queerlapis. com, 2020. On shamanism, see Christina Pratt, An Encyclopedia Of Shamanism (New York: Rosen, 2007). 2 See Michael G. Peletz, Gender Pluralism (New York: Routledge, 2009), Sally Hines, Is Gender Fluid? A Primer to the 21st Century (London: Thames and Hudson, 2018), and Daphna Joel and Luba Vikhanski, Gender Mosaic: Beyond the Myth of the Male and Female Brain (London: Endeavour, 2019). 3 Justin Parkinson, ‘The Significance of Sarah Baartman’, in BBC News, 7 January 2016.
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GENDER PLURALITY This is by no means a comprehensive list. *denotes that the word may have developed into a slur in contemporary language
• Bissu, Calabai and Calalai of the Bugis people • Manang Bali of the Iban people • Nuba peoples of Sudan • Sht of Ancient Egypt ~ (Khawal)* of Egypt • لوخ • კინტო (Kinto) of Georgia • baklâ*, bayot and agi of the Phillipines • กะเทย (Kathoey) in Thailand • Akava’ine of the Māori people (Kūki ‘Āirani) • Whakawahine and tanata ira tane of the Māori people (Aotearoa) • Mukhannathun of the Pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula • Quariwarmi of the Incan people • Fa‘afafine and fa’afatama in Samoa • Fakaleita, leitı̄ and fakatangata in Tonga • Rae-rae and Māhū in Hawai’i • Rae-rae and Māhū in Tahiti • Vaka sa lewa lewa in Fiji • Muxe of the Oaxacan people • Fakafifine in Niuē • Pinapinaaine in Tuvalu • Pinapinaaine in Kiribati • Itijjuaq of the Inuit people • A’yai-kik-ahsi of the Niitsítapi people (North America) • Ninauh-oskitsi-pahpyaki of the Niitsítapi people North America) • Napêw iskwêwisêhot of the Nēhiyawēwin people (North America) • Iskwêw ka napêwayat of the Nēhiyawēwin people (North America) • Ayahkwêw* of the Nēhiyawēwin people (North America) • Înahpîkasoht of the Nēhiyawēwin people (North America) • Iskwêhkân of the Nēhiyawēwin people (North America) • Napêhkân of the Nēhiyawēwin people (North America) • Batée of the Apsáalooke people (North America) • Wíŋtke of the Lakȟóta (North America) • Nádleehi of the Naabeehó and Diné (North America) • Ikwekaazo and ininiikaazo of the Anishinaabeg (North America) • Lhamana of the A:shiwi (North America) • Basir of the Ngaju Dayak
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• နတ်ကတော် (nat kadaws) of Burma • Pawang of Pre-Islamic Malaya • तृतीयप्रकृति (tritiya-prakrti) of Vedic India • खसुआ (khasuaa) and खुसरा (khusaraa) in Urdu (language) in India and Pakistan • నపుంసకుడు (napunsakudu) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (India) • కొజ్జ (kojja) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (India) • మాడ (maada) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (India) • Thiru nangai, ali, aravanni, aravani and aruvani of the Tamil People • Khusra or jankha of the Punjabi People • ಮಂಗಳಮುಖಿ (mangalamukhi) or ಚಕ್ಕ (chhakka) of Karnataka (India) • Khadra of the Sindhi People • પાવૈયા (pavaiyaa) of the Gujarati people • হিজড়া (hijra) of the Bengali People • Achnucek and shopan of the Aleut and Kodiak peoples (southern Alaska) • Koe’kcuc of the Chukchi people in Siberia • Elxá of the Kwtsaan people (Quechan people of North America) • Haxu’xan of the Hinono’eino people (Arapaho people of North America) • Quetho of Tewa People (North America) • Wi-kovat* of Akimel O’otham (Pima people of North America) • Inkosi ygbatfazi of the amaZulu people (southern Africa) • Skesana of the amaZulu people (southern Africa) • Inkotshane of the amaZulu people (southern Africa) • Nkhonsthana of the amaZulu people (southern Africa) • Tinkonkana of the amaZulu people (southern Africa) • Mugawe of the Meru people (Kenya) • Wandarwarad and Wandawande of the Amara people (Ethiopia) • Esenge and eshenge of the Ovambo people (southern Africa) • Kitesha of the Songye people (Congo) • Ikihindu and ikimaze of Rwanda • Chibados of the Luanda people (Angola) • Ashtime of the Maale people (Ethiopia)
ARÓ
JUMANAH BAWAZIR AND VIVIAN OLAWEPO (ARÓ)
LIKE WATER
Aró Like water we flow From exile we grow Into transient spaces we know Aró Transience Like water our movements Tranquil and soft for a moment ...A moment.
Transcend. Like water we wrestle Between our consciousness and our vessel Who am I? Who are we? The repeated questions Of a soul in exile
Exile Is the dam Between my freedom and oppression Between my origin and who I am
This dam Is the wall I ram against To form the crack I make myself The crack I breathe into Seep through This crack is my third space Third space My first race Has been exiled, Transmuted, transformed, transcended With my other race My third space Dam Is space Space I cannot afford Yet unknowingly have A constructed space that transcends Into its own accord without me Being black is a cyclical cycle, An old archive, a new wave, a drop in the water Destroy the dam. To reclaim our time
Dam Is time The border between order And disorder The border between generations that distort her Her who is me, myself, and we Dam Is time The border between they and The border between masc and Us and Them This dam has contained me, Until a spring tide flooded Caused by the eclipse of my
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he femme
we, identity
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