Artworks from the NGJ’s permanent collection have been included in an international art exhibition entitled O Quilombismo, which opened on June 2, 2023 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) located in Berlin, Germany. The HKW is “…a pluri-disciplinary institution in Berlin whose work centers around the practices of visual arts, performative arts, sonic/music, architecture, literature and oraliture, as well as scientific and cultural discursive formats.”
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Hattarabi Maulasab Gunjavati, Untitled (2023); Everald Brown, Mystical Signs (1994), courtesy National Gallery of Jamaica; Abdias Nascimento, Ponto Riscado da Liberdade (Sacred Sign for Freedom, 1974), Quilombismo (Exu e Ogum, 1980), Afro Estandarte (African Standard, 1993), Teogonia Afro-Brasileira n. 2: Iansã, Obatalá, Oxum, Oxóssi, Yemanjá, Ogum, Ossaim, Xangô, Exu (Afro-Brazilian Theogony n. 2: Iansan, Obatala Oshun, Oshossi, Yemanja, Ogun, Osanyin, Shango, Eshu, 1972), courtesy Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Afro-Brasileiros IPEAFRO. Installation view of the exhibition ‘O Quilombismo: Of Resisting and Insisting. Of Flight as Fight. Of Other Democratic Egalitarian Political Philosophies’ at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), 2023. Photo: Laura Fiorio/HKW ![]()
Mallica ‘Kapo’ Reynolds – Kubalee, 1972 on view at the exhibition ‘O Quilombismo: Of Resisting and Insisting. Of Flight as Fight. Of Other Democratic Egalitarian Political Philosophies’ at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, 2023.
Quilombismo is an Afro-Brazilian term that identifies an ideology based on an understanding of the quilombos – communities of escaped slaves, formed during the 16th to 19th centuries in Brazil – and the recognition of them by contemporary researchers and writers as social groups that realized the creation of their own ‘free societies’ in order to recover their liberties and maintain their human dignity. One may consider Jamaican Maroon communities as examples of similar free societies in the Americas, created as an anti-imperialist response to European colonization and cultural subjugation.
The HKW curatorial team – led by chief curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung – considered the work of a variety of artistic voices from across the Americas, including the Jamaican Intuitives, who are esteemed as some of the most dynamic artists from our region. As such, the NGJ was pleased to collaborate with the HKW team, to include the works of Jamaican artists Everald Brown and Mallica ‘Kapo’ Reynolds. Other countries represented by artworks featured in the exhibition include Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba, Columbia, Mexico, and the United States. HKW’s full statement on the exhibition, along with other details can be accessed here.
Chief Curator O’Neil Lawrence travelled to Berlin to assist with the installation of the NGJ artworks loaned to the exhibition. He participated in the panel discussion Subversive Bodies in Conversation: Bodies as Joyfields, Bodies as Battlefields, discussing his artistic practice with artists Bruno Zhu and Grada Kilomba, moderated by curators Cosmin Canstinaş and Dr Rosa Cordillera Castillo. He also co-authored a text in the O Quilombismo Reader and was a panelist alongside contributors Berette Macaulay, Elisa Larkin Nascimento and editor Eric Otieno Sumba at the launch of the reader.
The O Quilombismo exhibition is scheduled to be on view at the HKW in Berlin until September 16, 2023.