Readings to Move the Center, 2016

What forces are necessary to move the Center?

One hypothesis would be that by weaving new histories and materializing other images, we weaken their “magnetic field” formed by colonizing practices and narratives. Currently, in a time of the failure of political representations, it is necessary to travel to the entrails of the Earth without fear of ripping out and digesting our viscera. The Afrofuturists of the mid-20th century affirmed that blacks would need to colonize space in order to become visible here, on Earth. We looked upward hoping that these intergalactic explorers would land, to tell us about their space conquests.

In her terrestrial travels, Ana Hupe observed the starry sky waiting for black heroines and then rummaged through our entrails so as not to forget the African diaspora. The artist roamed through an impossible geography that is home to a community of foreign – immigrant and nomadic – women. On her journey, Hupe found vestiges of the Afrofuturist explorations, collected statements from Afrodescendents, Africans and Haitians in Brazil and in Germany, read novels and historical narratives, and imagined a group of female warriors who travel like a comet through our past, present and future.

In this graphic manufactory, library and reading room, the various ways of reading and listening configure a place for the encounter of voices. Hupe understands the production of books, narratives and reading devices as possibilities for making amends for our colonial past and planning a future. The artist works on a tightrope. At one end, she resorts to practices similar to those of colonial politics (collection, analysis and invention of types) to fictionalize a subject that is presented through her mediation. On the other, she fabulates the histories lived by these female warriors who went to the Moon and descended into the confines of the Earth. Ana Hupe embraces risk and exposes the collective force necessary to move the Center.

Natália Quinderé