Artists

Haloba, Anawana

How to (Re)Pair My Grandmother's Basket, 2021
(c) Anawana Haloba; Foto: Adriana Calderon

"Go and learn, be better than them because I was there and / I was best."
How to (Re)Pair My Grandmother’s Basket (2021) is an artwork by Oslo and Livingstone-based artist Anawana Haloba, that borrows from African philosophy and operatic traditions to embark on a decolonial exploration of intersections and differences.
Originally conceived as a performance piece, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Haloba to radically reimagine her project. The reconceptualized experimental opera is music in the form of objects. They become vessels, or rather bodies, for the narration. Hereby, the piece invites the viewer to readjust their reading of what an opera can be: the objects become the actors, their constellation starts resonating.
The work’s elements come together in the mind’s eye to expand beyond the stage. They form a lyrical dance between voices that intersect, but also tune into and distinguish themselves from one another. Marks and characters are sculpture, a moving image, and music at once. We see the stage as a circle with an attached tip, imagine instruments and the polyphonic sounds of performers.
Haloba’s texts and installations encourage open conversation between the descendants of colonizers and those of the colonized, or as Haloba herself once put it: “Since we equally share a DNA of trauma, to fully accept responsibility for the shared trauma is the start of dialogue.”1
How to (Re)Pair My Grandmother’s Basket draws on operatic conventions from Zambia and the Ubuntu philosophy of encounter. It is also informed by Negotiating the Subtle Encounters, Haloba’s doctoral thesis comparing the writings of thinkers Frantz Fanon and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnsonan.
The Experimental Opera is a fluid home for post human entities who change places and gender. It is a vehicle for transcultural, transnational and transgendered exchange, an exercise in solidary uprooting.

1 Anawana Haloba, “Negotiating the Subtle Encounters: An Experimental Opera”. E-Flux, 23.06.2021, https://www.e flux.com/announcements/402915/anawana halobanegot

Text: Eva Tepest; englische Übersetzung: Amy Patton

"Go and learn, be better than them because I was there and / I was best."
How to (Re)Pair My Grandmother’s Basket (2021) is an artwork by Oslo and Livingstone-based artist Anawana Haloba, that borrows from African philosophy and operatic traditions to embark on a decolonial exploration of intersections and differences.
Originally conceived as a performance piece, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Haloba to radically reimagine her project. The reconceptualized experimental opera is music in the form of objects. They become vessels, or rather bodies, for the narration. Hereby, the piece invites the viewer to readjust their reading of what an opera can be: the objects become the actors, their constellation starts resonating.
The work’s elements come together in the mind’s eye to expand beyond the stage. They form a lyrical dance between voices that intersect, but also tune into and distinguish themselves from one another. Marks and characters are sculpture, a moving image, and music at once. We see the stage as a circle with an attached tip, imagine instruments and the polyphonic sounds of performers.
Haloba’s texts and installations encourage open conversation between the descendants of colonizers and those of the colonized, or as Haloba herself once put it: “Since we equally share a DNA of trauma, to fully accept responsibility for the shared trauma is the start of dialogue.”1
How to (Re)Pair My Grandmother’s Basket draws on operatic conventions from Zambia and the Ubuntu philosophy of encounter. It is also informed by Negotiating the Subtle Encounters, Haloba’s doctoral thesis comparing the writings of thinkers Frantz Fanon and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnsonan.
The Experimental Opera is a fluid home for post human entities who change places and gender. It is a vehicle for transcultural, transnational and transgendered exchange, an exercise in solidary uprooting.

1 Anawana Haloba, “Negotiating the Subtle Encounters: An Experimental Opera”. E-Flux, 23.06.2021, https://www.e flux.com/announcements/402915/anawana halobanegot

Text: Eva Tepest; englische Übersetzung: Amy Patton

How to (Re)Pair My Grandmother's Basket, 2021
(c) Anawana Haloba; Foto: Adriana Calderon