Bookshop Situation Series: I See From This Perspective, Mmabatho Thobejane and Reconstructions

Welcome to a special Bookshop Situation Series event at Index, where Reconstructions hosts the launch of I See From This Perspective: Curatorial Writings by Women of Colour, an anthology edited by Mmabatho Thobejane, with illustrations and graphic design by Soban Moallim.

I See From This Perspective: Curatorial Writings by Women of Colour is an anthology that brings together contributions by six black women and women of colour curators and thinkers. Inspired by Diane Lima’s notion of a ‘practice in perspective’, the texts explore how black women and women of colour curators practise in different contexts, at the edge of the Anglo-European ‘World’ and in sight of the ‘otherwise’. The authors included are Diane Lima, Nkule Mabaso, Joana Joachim, Nana Adusei-Poku, Chandra Frank and Alberta Whittle. Each enacts and posits, in different ways, the curatorial as a site for opening up to cosmologies otherwise.

For the publication launch curator and traditional healer Mmabatho Thobejane invites participants into the altar practice she has been developing during her participation in the Reconstructions postmasters course. She enacts the curatorial as a practice of care and employs the altar for this end. In her practice, the altar is a portal, an archive, a place of gathering and opening where time-space is disrupted. It is a tool that signals an otherwise that is already here and embodied. You are invited to the altar to gather around, to listen to and to share in its methodologies.

The space is co-communed with and held by Levi Appleton, Maipelo Gabang, Rana Kadry Mohamed Osman, Rossana Mercado-Rojas, Agnese Noah and Marie-Louise Richards

Reconstructions is a postmasters course at the Royal Institute of Art led by Marie-Louise Richards. The course seeks, amongst other things, to reimagine spatial practices “otherwise”––learning from black feminism.

I See From This Perspective: Curatorial Writings by Women of Colour was completed as part of Mmabatho Thobejane’s degree project within the International Master’s Program in Curating, including Art, Management and Law at Stockholm University.

The Bookshop Situation Series at Index is based on events to present books, magazines, records and other artistic formats. The bookshop situation is a way to test content, to share it, to distribute it, offering situations to be part of a community of experimental producers and users.