The Roots of Our Hands Deep as Revolt. Entangled Colonialities of the Green

An exhibition by the Nyabinghi Lab in cooperation with the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) and Chimurenga (Cape Town) supported by the Federal Cultural Foundation

Environmentalism, sustainability, and other green practices have historically marginalized non-white and non-Western voices and realities. The project “The Roots of Our Hands Deep as Revolt”: Entangled Colonialities of the Green explores the history of these exclusions, questions the colonial narrative of the human/nature duality and connects environmental discourses with anti-colonial struggles.

The emergence of environmental protection, vegetarianism, organic farming, nudism, naturopathy and the life reform movement (ca. 1880 - 1933) in general was closely linked to colonial efforts, a fact that remains a blind spot in research today. While “oneness with nature” was seen as a criterion of “backwardness” for BiPoc in the colonies, the life reformers simultaneously postulated a “return to nature” as a futuristic and avant-garde undertaking in the metropolis that freed (white) bodies from the “ constraints of civilization”.

Through exhibitions, performances, discursive programs and a publication, the project examines how this discrepancy has profoundly shaped environmental discourses, policies and practices to this day. It also illuminates the ways in which anti-colonial and decolonial struggles have challenged the human/nature binary and the associated notion of the relationship between the human body, nature and “civilization”. The invited artists and participants explore Black and radical decolonial/queer ecologies as sites of possibility for alternative conceptions of nature, for future visions of sustainability, reciprocity, Blackness, (non-)humanity and ecological responsibility.

• https://www.artrabbit.com/events/the-roo...