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DANA WHABIRA

Circles of Uncertainty (5)

2017

Processo: Circle of Uncertainty (5), Studio, Harare, 2017.
Foto: Raphael Chikukwa, cortesia de The National Gallery of Zimbabwe.

The experimental practice of visual artist and architect Dana Whabira is centered on space, cartography and a critical understanding of how we can live together. The series Circles of Uncertainty is an ongoing research about the histories of mapping and migration in African diasporic communities. Through these large-scale circular forms, Whabira retraces displaced histories of maroon communities who found freedom through radical means such as planting maps of escape routes, seeds and gold into their hair. For her project in Porto Alegre, Whabira set herself to trace local black spatiality, temporality and radicality by mapping local Quilombos and areas of black occupation, understanding their complex nature, their precarious existence and ambiguous delineation both in the past and present. As a way to access racial politics in Brazil, Whabira was also interested in the status/space quilombos occupy in the urban psyche, mythology and imaginary. In her work, cartography, calligraphy and composition are intertwined to highlight liberation networks and transnational links and connections between Latin America and Africa.

Dana Whabira

Dana Whabira

Zimbábue