https://okra-agency.com OKRA Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:01:09 +0000 https://okra-agency.com en https://okra-agency.com/Index Fri, 21 Nov 2025 08:59:14 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/Index A Abdé Batchati <img width="5000" height="3333" width_o="5000" height_o="3333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" data-mid="243718563" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" /> Abdoulaye Niang <img width="4223" height="6334" width_o="4223" height_o="6334" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e4c540e78b817e4fab7b36c0b7ee3b2b9bdb48287563065b4eb21125021e50f9/MAIN-IMAGE_Y6A8968.jpg" data-mid="243709513" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e4c540e78b817e4fab7b36c0b7ee3b2b9bdb48287563065b4eb21125021e50f9/MAIN-IMAGE_Y6A8968.jpg" /> Afaina de Jong <img width="5000" height="3333" width_o="5000" height_o="3333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" data-mid="243718563" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" /> Aisha Mugo <img width="5000" height="3333" width_o="5000" height_o="3333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" data-mid="243718563" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" /> Andu Masebo <img width="3864" height="5000" width_o="3864" height_o="5000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0aac3f6eadb80f404d00d0cb2f43877aac5cd80cb22b104534c835d4b21a8e67/MAIN-IMAGE_O49A7624.jpg" data-mid="243705062" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0aac3f6eadb80f404d00d0cb2f43877aac5cd80cb22b104534c835d4b21a8e67/MAIN-IMAGE_O49A7624.jpg" /> Angel Harvey-Ideozu <img width="2000" height="741" width_o="2000" height_o="741" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0ccfab14d9b46c4f18f9390ac0a3bc47f3d9a028b0792e999402657607f6fe3b/Daaka-three-legged-stool--Dagara--Burkina-Faso.-Image-from-the-Van-Rijn-Archive-of-African-Art-YVRA-at-the-Yale-University-Art-Gallery.-Yale-University-Open-Community-Collections.jpg" data-mid="243705587" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0ccfab14d9b46c4f18f9390ac0a3bc47f3d9a028b0792e999402657607f6fe3b/Daaka-three-legged-stool--Dagara--Burkina-Faso.-Image-from-the-Van-Rijn-Archive-of-African-Art-YVRA-at-the-Yale-University-Art-Gallery.-Yale-University-Open-Community-Collections.jpg" /> B Bianca Saunders <img width="1200" height="800" width_o="1200" height_o="800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/05716746f2e23ffc93a92ebddad87a0ac773ad3ca4ff06afe14eb446847ad577/Frame-1.png" data-mid="243710155" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/05716746f2e23ffc93a92ebddad87a0ac773ad3ca4ff06afe14eb446847ad577/Frame-1.png" /> C Charles O. Job <img width="5433" height="3780" width_o="5433" height_o="3780" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0128675bb0c48cc3ad9c23b653e72cca0629b8c2684a2ba9c1e0c42ab051bda9/MAIN_SKETCH-BACK-copy.jpeg" data-mid="243708614" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0128675bb0c48cc3ad9c23b653e72cca0629b8c2684a2ba9c1e0c42ab051bda9/MAIN_SKETCH-BACK-copy.jpeg" /> Charlene Prempeh <img width="3746" height="4721" width_o="3746" height_o="4721" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/984de00181d925433bc585ab59ef58d32a4311594f10e9906422ef52ed4ce949/MAIN-IMAGE_OKRA_CHARLENE_LUCKY_17_11_2025_05.jpg" data-mid="243707089" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/984de00181d925433bc585ab59ef58d32a4311594f10e9906422ef52ed4ce949/MAIN-IMAGE_OKRA_CHARLENE_LUCKY_17_11_2025_05.jpg" /> Christian Cassiel <img width="3864" height="5000" width_o="3864" height_o="5000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/367ce2e72bb64344e473a471356e4ffaf46e8551a9583343da730efca43c2f4d/O49A7655.jpg" data-mid="243705064" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/367ce2e72bb64344e473a471356e4ffaf46e8551a9583343da730efca43c2f4d/O49A7655.jpg" /> E Elisa Heath <img width="1239" height="826" width_o="1239" height_o="826" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fb674185bfce3829651a6c538b8618925c72ae92a533010123992c3f69c446e2/MAIN_Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.14.36-kopie-3.jpeg" data-mid="243734895" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fb674185bfce3829651a6c538b8618925c72ae92a533010123992c3f69c446e2/MAIN_Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.14.36-kopie-3.jpeg" /> G Giles Tettey Nartey <img width="5365" height="4024" width_o="5365" height_o="4024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4e98702b504cf88229892093bb19f43c049843fe35af26bf800c03cddf52e1ce/MAIN-Giles-Tettey-Nartey.jpeg" data-mid="243709465" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4e98702b504cf88229892093bb19f43c049843fe35af26bf800c03cddf52e1ce/MAIN-Giles-Tettey-Nartey.jpeg" /> J Joy Iheoma van Geerestein <img width="1166" height="1556" width_o="1166" height_o="1556" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/86b1e62b37e19d9ffbe181e392d54e33216e729d24df93260fda7359fb2957ed/Screenshot-2026-01-22-at-22.18.49.png" data-mid="243859058" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/86b1e62b37e19d9ffbe181e392d54e33216e729d24df93260fda7359fb2957ed/Screenshot-2026-01-22-at-22.18.49.png" /> K Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk <img width="5000" height="3333" width_o="5000" height_o="3333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" data-mid="243718563" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" /> Kusheda Mensah <img width="1200" height="800" width_o="1200" height_o="800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/05716746f2e23ffc93a92ebddad87a0ac773ad3ca4ff06afe14eb446847ad577/Frame-1.png" data-mid="243710155" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/05716746f2e23ffc93a92ebddad87a0ac773ad3ca4ff06afe14eb446847ad577/Frame-1.png" /> L Lilly Alexandra <img width="3508" height="4961" width_o="3508" height_o="4961" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/917a32beb1894e40034a9f796c6162638693e1853fab370c648a7f36f15ff31b/Untitled-1.jpg" data-mid="240931722" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/917a32beb1894e40034a9f796c6162638693e1853fab370c648a7f36f15ff31b/Untitled-1.jpg" /> M Margarida Waco <img width="5000" height="3333" width_o="5000" height_o="3333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" data-mid="243718563" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d213e940a338e63f11309559dc738cb8ddaf5e7bcf03e36b18443042c19f9e76/MAIN_Y4A1111.jpg" /> Mirelle van Tulder <img width="3840" height="2160" width_o="3840" height_o="2160" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9e10e2729406a7567aa372e94e253467f9ac86e534460b5cc741872c9b11cb62/BPE-Finals-Intorduction-Stills_0140.jpg" data-mid="241817748" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9e10e2729406a7567aa372e94e253467f9ac86e534460b5cc741872c9b11cb62/BPE-Finals-Intorduction-Stills_0140.jpg" /> N Nifemi Marcus-Bello <img width="1536" height="2150" width_o="1536" height_o="2150" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e028a356ce35ad732b0ceb0b742ecdf720d14170c6e0e8c362017899415d9cff/MAIN.JPG" data-mid="243859073" border="0" data-scale="30" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e028a356ce35ad732b0ceb0b742ecdf720d14170c6e0e8c362017899415d9cff/MAIN.JPG" /> Nora Marica <img width="1239" height="826" width_o="1239" height_o="826" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fb674185bfce3829651a6c538b8618925c72ae92a533010123992c3f69c446e2/MAIN_Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.14.36-kopie-3.jpeg" data-mid="243734895" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fb674185bfce3829651a6c538b8618925c72ae92a533010123992c3f69c446e2/MAIN_Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.14.36-kopie-3.jpeg" /> S Sade Ekwedike <img width="1232" height="1840" width_o="1232" height_o="1840" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d651fda21050f9f4d5b9b2ebffbfccddbe1ade4ca42c814f204bce7b8af57c73/MAIN-IMAGE_CNV000019.jpg" data-mid="243735417" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d651fda21050f9f4d5b9b2ebffbfccddbe1ade4ca42c814f204bce7b8af57c73/MAIN-IMAGE_CNV000019.jpg" /> Sammy Bernoussi <img width="4223" height="6334" width_o="4223" height_o="6334" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e4c540e78b817e4fab7b36c0b7ee3b2b9bdb48287563065b4eb21125021e50f9/MAIN-IMAGE_Y6A8968.jpg" data-mid="243709513" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e4c540e78b817e4fab7b36c0b7ee3b2b9bdb48287563065b4eb21125021e50f9/MAIN-IMAGE_Y6A8968.jpg" /> Shani Strand <img width="960" height="1196" width_o="960" height_o="1196" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/80c27d13d6f5c2e82e6264013f57314854431ed5d2bc3a5c502d92288332c52d/MAIN_The-Monsignor-Verriet-Instituut--Studio-8-Architects--facebook.com_studio8-2.jpg" data-mid="243747672" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/960/i/80c27d13d6f5c2e82e6264013f57314854431ed5d2bc3a5c502d92288332c52d/MAIN_The-Monsignor-Verriet-Instituut--Studio-8-Architects--facebook.com_studio8-2.jpg" /> Setareh Noorani <img width="8256" height="5504" width_o="8256" height_o="5504" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b79d003318f24f305d46d885d68ecb62cc9dee5fcdf0ace8965c0cfbfe054c8c/MAIN_TPJ_SetarehNoorani-JelmerTeunissen_BuroStedelijk_CentralSpace_HR_16.jpeg" data-mid="243739059" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b79d003318f24f305d46d885d68ecb62cc9dee5fcdf0ace8965c0cfbfe054c8c/MAIN_TPJ_SetarehNoorani-JelmerTeunissen_BuroStedelijk_CentralSpace_HR_16.jpeg" /> T Tamarah Kerr de Haan <img width="3840" height="2160" width_o="3840" height_o="2160" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b3ba75b272108a63f5e8c9bfd5392a1dc6f5778f150d637a4dd070f92de280f4/MAIN_BPE-Finals-Online-Version-Uncompressed-Picture-Locked-Copy-320.jpg" data-mid="243725300" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b3ba75b272108a63f5e8c9bfd5392a1dc6f5778f150d637a4dd070f92de280f4/MAIN_BPE-Finals-Online-Version-Uncompressed-Picture-Locked-Copy-320.jpg" /> Teddy Sanches <img width="1196" height="1800" width_o="1196" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3153a495fdd34381a85b0afceb1be5741ad5aff7b3bbc547783257c5b77298f5/Screenshot-2025-11-21-at-12.21.16.png" data-mid="240932566" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3153a495fdd34381a85b0afceb1be5741ad5aff7b3bbc547783257c5b77298f5/Screenshot-2025-11-21-at-12.21.16.png" /> Z Zakari Boukhari <img width="1196" height="1800" width_o="1196" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3153a495fdd34381a85b0afceb1be5741ad5aff7b3bbc547783257c5b77298f5/Screenshot-2025-11-21-at-12.21.16.png" data-mid="240932566" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3153a495fdd34381a85b0afceb1be5741ad5aff7b3bbc547783257c5b77298f5/Screenshot-2025-11-21-at-12.21.16.png" /> Zenobia Lee <img width="960" height="1196" width_o="960" height_o="1196" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/80c27d13d6f5c2e82e6264013f57314854431ed5d2bc3a5c502d92288332c52d/MAIN_The-Monsignor-Verriet-Instituut--Studio-8-Architects--facebook.com_studio8-2.jpg" data-mid="243747672" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/960/i/80c27d13d6f5c2e82e6264013f57314854431ed5d2bc3a5c502d92288332c52d/MAIN_The-Monsignor-Verriet-Instituut--Studio-8-Architects--facebook.com_studio8-2.jpg" /> Zhedy Lena Nuentsa <img width="1196" height="1800" width_o="1196" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3153a495fdd34381a85b0afceb1be5741ad5aff7b3bbc547783257c5b77298f5/Screenshot-2025-11-21-at-12.21.16.png" data-mid="240932566" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3153a495fdd34381a85b0afceb1be5741ad5aff7b3bbc547783257c5b77298f5/Screenshot-2025-11-21-at-12.21.16.png" /> https://okra-agency.com/Form-and-Meaning Wed, 21 Jan 2026 08:30:14 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/Form-and-Meaning Form and Meaning: Objects, Ritual Choreographies, and the Soul How Spiritual Objects Take On Meaning and Leave an Impression By Angel Harvey-Ideozu <img width="6980" height="4925" width_o="6980" height_o="4925" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fec971dd2204a880ebecf288bec3e9951d5faf825e964a6814792f3537f3e424/MAIN_Atavism.JPG" data-mid="243705289" border="0" data-scale="66" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fec971dd2204a880ebecf288bec3e9951d5faf825e964a6814792f3537f3e424/MAIN_Atavism.JPG" /> &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Across Black indigenous and diasporic populations, traditional and cosmologically adapted spiritual practices — though they tend to be blanketed under the illusory, not-quite-descript and vague term of ‘Black Mysticism’ — are defined and practiced in distinctly separate ways around the world, according to the specific social, cultural and geographical contexts from which they root. In Of Water and the Spirit, the 1994 autobiography of African author, shaman, and magic theologist Malidoma Patrice Somé, religious practice according to the Dagara people of West Africa’s Burkina Faso is the centre of focus. Presented within the context of Somé’s return to his tribal community and spiritual home, Dagara spirituality is primarily positioned as the way to come into one’s self, to fulfill the prophecy of one’s destiny as determined — in Dagara culture — by one’s name. For Somé, traditional spirituality and its appointed diviners heal and soften him, offering supernatural protections and answers on his life’s journey to fulfilling his purpose and becoming his name: “Be friends with the stranger/enemy.” Nearly 6,500 miles from south-western Burkina Faso, in north-eastern Brazil, Afro-diasporic Angola Candomblé practices dictate a spirituality that focuses on ancestral worship in the form of nkisis. Establishing a closer relationship between human and spiritual realms, these ancestral spirit guides range from deities of abundance, the forest, and hunting, representing intelligence, discernment, and patience (Mutakalambô), to deities of an enchanted childhood, representing purity of heart, hope, and joy (Vunji). Initiates sacrifice to and call on their ordained nkisi for direction as they proceed through the seasons of life. Back on the African continent, Lugbara spirituality in northwestern Uganda also carries deep ancestral links which establish the living and the dead as inextricably connected and in permanent relationship with one another. For its estimated one million practitioners, Lugbara is understood as a framework through which one comes to understand and rationalise life. As Ivan Karp articulates in the foreword to John Middleton’s 1960 book Lugbara Religion: Ritual and Authority Among an East African People, this is a faith that performs as “a set of beliefs and practices that people invoke to define evil, alleviate suffering, and control an uncontrollable world.” This which holds similarities, yet remains wildly different from TKTK spirituality from the TKTKT people in the Asian or Oceanic Diaspora. Across each of these examples of Black spiritual practices — which make up just three out of the countless religious factions and sects across the African continent and its diasporic communities — the modes, means, and points of practice shapeshift, revealing ‘Black Mysticism’ as varied and non-monolithic. Yet, in each of these instances the relationship to the spiritual object remains one of the key, central, and constant elements. <img width="2000" height="741" width_o="2000" height_o="741" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/81f32e724361189a07bb731d784e4ed4f7d831909f936cce18dde4b3fddd6e0e/Daaka-three-legged-stool--Dagara--Burkina-Faso.-Image-from-the-Van-Rijn-Archive-of-African-Art-YVRA-at-the-Yale-University-Art-Gallery.-Yale-University-Open-Community-Collections.jpg" data-mid="243705287" border="0" data-scale="70" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/81f32e724361189a07bb731d784e4ed4f7d831909f936cce18dde4b3fddd6e0e/Daaka-three-legged-stool--Dagara--Burkina-Faso.-Image-from-the-Van-Rijn-Archive-of-African-Art-YVRA-at-the-Yale-University-Art-Gallery.-Yale-University-Open-Community-Collections.jpg" />Daàka, a traditional Dagara three-legged stool. Image courtesy of the Van Rijn Archive of African Art (YVRA) at the Yale University Art Gallery. Yale University Open Community Collections. From three-legged daàka wooden stools used by the Dagara people, to the nkisi-representing ferramenta in Angolan Candomblé, and quartz stones, si, in Lugbara, the idea that spirits move and speak through material objects, manifesting themselves into the fleshly realm, is visible across numerous (if not all) of these spiritual practices. From Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to those that are Indigenous, pre-colonial, traditional, and cosmologically adapted, objects become the way to connect the heavens and the earth, materialising the Other World.&nbsp; In order for this process to take place, a transformation must occur. Looking at religious objects in Polynesian cultural traditions, in “Containers of Divinity”, research anthropologist and Smithsonian curator Adrienne L. Kaeppler writes in a 2007 article, “Containers of Divinity”, “It is a combination of the product and the process of fabrication and wrapping that makes something sacred and divine.” Mapping these processes in the making of the “neat little ark made of sacred polished wood” that is the Tuamotu godhouse, Kaeppler deconstructs: “Covered with fara thatch … varying in size according to the form of the god that was placed in it. One end was closed. The other end had a circular entrance for the god, with a close-fitting stopper of sacred cloth. To this ark were attached cords of sacred sennit, which were passed under it to either side, forming a loop at each corner, through which polished poles of miro wood were passed … The ark containing the god rested between.”And for Tahitian sennit god figures (to ‘o):&nbsp; “The gods were assembled, uncovered and re-dressed at a national marae ‘outdoor temple’ ... the marae was cleaned, the sacred white pu ‘upu ‘u barkcloth was prepared … cordage sacred to the god Tane was readied … the to ‘o was carried to the marae … the lesser gods were presented … The old vestments of the to ‘o were removed, placed in a sacred spot on the marae and left to decompose. The wood part of the to ‘o was rubbed … a sacred male pig was sacrificed. The to ‘o was dressed … and reactivated by incantations of the priests … all the images, to ‘o and the lesser ti ‘i (wooden images), were sanctified.” <img width="837" height="1200" width_o="837" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ed1ddcf1d6ed6fbd3ff4388da7a9ea804483155a0649a0585368f20539483b6d/Ferramanta-Nkisis-Angolan-Candomble.-Image-found-online.jpg" data-mid="243705288" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/837/i/ed1ddcf1d6ed6fbd3ff4388da7a9ea804483155a0649a0585368f20539483b6d/Ferramanta-Nkisis-Angolan-Candomble.-Image-found-online.jpg" /> <img width="1536" height="1111" width_o="1536" height_o="1111" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b09abfaac9b4dbcfa1fa58670a4da013470926062cd943932b5f5033ea2853cd/Specimen-of-quartz.jpg" data-mid="243705290" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b09abfaac9b4dbcfa1fa58670a4da013470926062cd943932b5f5033ea2853cd/Specimen-of-quartz.jpg" /> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Here, the propagation of the idea of the ritual sanctifying of spiritual objects asserts movement, via performance and order, as one of the other key elements of this spiritual/religious practice. The construction of the Tukolor loom-shrine used by mabube weavers in Senegal’s Fuuta Toro region, can be taken as a further example (and point of escalation). Planted in a choreographed ritual detailed in Roy Dilley’s “Myth and Meaning and the Tukolor Loom” paper, the loom is built from the ground up:&nbsp; “Two marks are made on the ground, one at either side of the weaver within a few inches of the end of the cloth beam. Two more marks are made at a leg's length away from the cloth beam…These last two marks are located in the following way: the weaver, who is sitting on the cloth beam with his legs pointing out at right-angles to it, places his heels together and turns each foot with the toes outwards so that the outer-side of the foot is on the ground. At the end of each foot the weaver makes a mark on the ground… These four marks represent the places for the four upright posts of the main loom structure. The holes for these posts are dug in a particular order. From the weaver's sitting position they are: first, the far-right post; second, the near-left; third, the far-left; finally, the near-right. When the weaver sinks the upright posts into the ground after digging these holes, he plants a few millet seeds under two of them — the far-right and the near-left posts.” Transforming it into a sacred object, this ritual establishes the loom as an object of divinity and the traditional weavers as diviners. Significantly, this text also demonstrates how one sacred object begets another. For example, millet seeds — which, away from this ritual, provide sustenance as one of Senegal’s most planted and consumed crops — are buried under the front-right and back-left posts of the Tukolor loom, aiding in the transformation of the act of weaving into a practice that is spiritually fruitful and divinely guided. When dedicated under the ritual of the loom and the divinity of sacred arrangement, they turn into an utterance, a dedication, and an object of divinity. Presented before the seydaneeje spirits of the weaving craft, which occupy the loom at night, they act as a form of ritual protection and represent growth in skill. Just as the sacred barkcloth was used in the transformation of the sacred figure and the sacred cloth in the transformation of the sacred godhouse, the sacred millet grain is used in the transformation of the sacred loom, which ancestral spirits occupy at night. Together, these objects and ritual choreographies establish the idea that not only does movement beget sanctity, and one sacred object beget another, but an object does not necessarily need to go through a process of physical transformation via ritualistic fabrication or ‘wrapping’ to be made sacred. Just as the common millet seed sees no change to its physical matter, yet is rendered as an object of divinity via dedication and sacred arrangement under divine ritual, the process of sanctity might instead be understood as first reliant on a change to the way the object is regarded by its practitioners, who, through systems of belief and worship, invite it to fall under the jurisdiction of the spiritual body. <img width="3213" height="4474" width_o="3213" height_o="4474" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9cd525a426283f445ac9e7d4075c6534e4269066d93f9e25f1fc4f35e775a58c/Untitled-Movement--Detail.JPG" data-mid="243705291" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9cd525a426283f445ac9e7d4075c6534e4269066d93f9e25f1fc4f35e775a58c/Untitled-Movement--Detail.JPG" />Untitled (Movement), detail, ongoing. Graphite on paper. Angel Harvey-Ideozu. 1 Daàka, a traditional Dagara three-legged stool. Image courtesy of the Van Rijn Archive of African Art (YVRA) at the Yale University Art Gallery. Yale University Open Community Collections. 2Untitled (Movement), detail, ongoing. Graphite on paper. Angel Harvey-Ideozu. Credits:Images courtesy of Angel Harvey-IdeozuDownload PDF: Get this article in print 21 January 2026 Share: Email, Instagram, WhatsApp Okra AgencySwalmstraat 2A 1079 ZN Amsterdam EssayInterviewResearchVisualProjectIndex AgencyContactInstagram Journal © 2026 Okra Agency All Rights Reserved https://okra-agency.com/Notes-on-Gold Wed, 21 Jan 2026 09:07:20 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/Notes-on-Gold Notes on GoldBy Charlene Prempeh <img width="3746" height="4721" width_o="3746" height_o="4721" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/19bbb9987435a53c32a667f076b20dd1e984cbb2f9b6fe788f09c01fa7b4b2d2/MAIN-IMAGE_OKRA_CHARLENE_LUCKY_17_11_2025_05.jpg" data-mid="243706729" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/19bbb9987435a53c32a667f076b20dd1e984cbb2f9b6fe788f09c01fa7b4b2d2/MAIN-IMAGE_OKRA_CHARLENE_LUCKY_17_11_2025_05.jpg" /> Many individuals from the African diaspora will lay claim to royal status. Here’s mine: The Asantehene of Ghana is my Dad’s cousin. Formally known as the Gold Coast under the rule of Britain, Ghana has long been famous for having an abundance of gold and the Golden Stool is the most famous emblem of the region. I held this information loosely growing up, but it was as a teenager when I arrived at the The Manhyia Palace in Kumasi, bored and hot, that the significance of gold as part of my family’s DNA really dawned on me. Here, the&nbsp;Asantehene sat on a gilded throne surrounded by an array of intricate gold objects. When I eventually used the bathroom during a break from watching the court jester, I was met with taps that appeared to be crafted from solid gold. In that moment, gold stopped seeming like a display of opulence and became, in my adolescent mind, a signifier of Ghanian culture and a declaration of pride. <img width="1818" height="1306" width_o="1818" height_o="1306" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bd40a892692bc6cd4f7aed5fb2c20bea9ee6e213900def4fb2589a229295ca86/OKRA_LIBRARY-40.jpg" data-mid="243706732" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bd40a892692bc6cd4f7aed5fb2c20bea9ee6e213900def4fb2589a229295ca86/OKRA_LIBRARY-40.jpg" /> Image of the Golden Stool from ‘the power of gold' by Roslyn Adele Walker, 2018 My circumstances growing up were not especially unusual for a single-parent family in Canning Town: Food was abundant, money was tight, and holidays were non-existent.&nbsp; I understood quite early on that there was little left for indulgent gifts, so when I received my first piece of gold jewellery-a cross with a St Michael’s pendant- it was a surprise. Unwrapping a gold clown with mechanical arms and legs was even more shocking on my 16th. But by the time I was gifted a knotted white gold chain on my 21st, I’d come to understand that gold gifts were somehow the exception to our austerity. &nbsp; <img width="4030" height="5080" width_o="4030" height_o="5080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2346f0de11c5020abf615f2dfa58db92cb451ca49f6c9c33945ccc5cecad624b/OKRA_CHARLENE_LUCKY_17_11_2025_04.jpg" data-mid="243706731" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2346f0de11c5020abf615f2dfa58db92cb451ca49f6c9c33945ccc5cecad624b/OKRA_CHARLENE_LUCKY_17_11_2025_04.jpg" /> <img width="3811" height="4804" width_o="3811" height_o="4804" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7dfda57303422317adaff0de87c6f36bd89da1fe063b40f16bba05f7d16b5eb8/OKRA_CHARLENE_LUCKY_17_11_2025_03.jpg" data-mid="243706730" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7dfda57303422317adaff0de87c6f36bd89da1fe063b40f16bba05f7d16b5eb8/OKRA_CHARLENE_LUCKY_17_11_2025_03.jpg" /> The combination of my mother’s generosity and my family history has meant that gold holds a slightly mythical status for me. Current design discussions often reference the opulent, gilded mess that Trump is busy creating in the White House ballroom. These narratives will include historical notes-gold overlay on Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese metalworks covered with gold 3000 years ago or how royalty wore gold jewellery in Medieval Europe. Passages will allude to the fact that gold has always been used to signify wealth. Yet, when I think of gold, it is not within a political or historical framework; I think of it as a way of communicating devotion and a reminder of the richness of Ghana. Gold is my material love language.&nbsp; <img width="3282" height="4185" width_o="3282" height_o="4185" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d22ec56203d2b900261696117255073e3ce493c08f851df997811e6dd4f13ab4/OKRA_CHARLENE_HI_RES_20_01_2026-2.jpg" data-mid="243842585" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d22ec56203d2b900261696117255073e3ce493c08f851df997811e6dd4f13ab4/OKRA_CHARLENE_HI_RES_20_01_2026-2.jpg" />Charlene Prempeh and her son, Lucky, photographed by Christian Cassiel Credits: Photography: Christian Cassiel Download PDF: Get this article in print21 January 2026 Share: Email, Instagram, WhatsApp Okra Agency Swalmstraat 2A 1079 ZN Amsterdam EssayInterviewResearchVisualProjectIndex Agency Contact Instagram Journal © 2026 Okra Agency All Rights Reserved https://okra-agency.com/A-strange-knowing-a-strange-language Mon, 01 Dec 2025 12:39:31 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/A-strange-knowing-a-strange-language &nbsp; a strange knowing, a strange language. By Giles Tettey Nartey <img width="5365" height="4024" width_o="5365" height_o="4024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d0635ba8c42a7b7e58a3015be5ad4abd25e22db7e7280805b797cb5e71d062a1/MAIN-Giles-Tettey-Nartey.jpeg" data-mid="243709082" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d0635ba8c42a7b7e58a3015be5ad4abd25e22db7e7280805b797cb5e71d062a1/MAIN-Giles-Tettey-Nartey.jpeg" /> Strange Notes, Giles Tettey Nartey, 2025 Valentin-Yves Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa puts forward the assertion that the very idea of “Africa” emerged through Western categories and prejudicial modes of classification. These categories produced an image of the continent shaped for Western consumption and, crucially, through Western comprehension. Mudimbe traces a historical sequence: early explorers, followed by missionaries, and later anthropologists, each working from an external vantage. Their accounts reduced the complexity they encountered, translating unfamiliar worlds into narratives that aligned with a eurocentric epistemological framework. These narratives circulated as stories brought back to populations eager to hear of distant places. In the process, wisdoms, rituals, and cosmological orientations that exceeded Western philological traditions were compressed, distorted, or erased. The resulting construction offered a simplified and misleading answer to the question “What is Africa?”, one shaped by reduction, omission, and the demands of legibility within a Western gaze. Mudimbe anchors this critique in the concept he names African Gnosis. The term designates indigenous systems of knowledge that operate beyond, and often against, the classificatory grids of Western epistemology. Drawing on the Greek gnosis, which means a form of knowing distinct from empirical or purely intellectual, African gnosis names a mode of understanding that is intuitive, embodied, and experiential. <img width="1266" height="1790" width_o="1266" height_o="1790" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5f7863ff2bd3262a648cf2c5f206d25edf37d19fef675d1b717bc89b255e2693/Figure-13-.png" data-mid="243709079" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5f7863ff2bd3262a648cf2c5f206d25edf37d19fef675d1b717bc89b255e2693/Figure-13-.png" /> Devotee of Hu, God of Ocean in Cana, Benin, Suzanne Preston Blier It resides in ritual, orature, and artefact; it moves through proverbs, gestures, stories, divination, and craft; and it remains inseparable from the practices and ecologies that sustain life. Mudimbe uses the term to mark a coherent and African-centred system of ordering knowledge. It names intellectual traditions that predated missionary and anthropological incursions and continued to exist alongside colonial rule, even as they were marginalised, misread, or dismissed as primitive. Because these epistemic formations did not align with Eurocentric criteria for what counted as knowledge, colonial administrations reorganised societies through European modes of reasoning, classification, and institutional structure. This imposed reconfiguration produced enduring states of epistemic misalignment: people compelled to operate within external frameworks that diverged from the indigenous logics through which their societies had evolved. The result was a condition of limbo, suspended between epistemic disfigurement and a sustained amnesia that obscured older modes of knowing. To ‘know’ something is often understood as the act of rendering it transparent, explaining, classifying, and placing it within a universal system of intelligibility. This demand for transparency aligns with colonial logics that translate difference into categories so it can be possessed, governed, or assimilated. States of unknowing or opacity are forcefully dismissed or violently made clear. Édouard Glissant’s writing on opacity is central to understanding this dynamic. He observes that “Western thought has imposed transparency and reduction as measures of truth. To know has too often meant to dominate, to order, to appropriate.” Glissant argues that peoples and cultures hold an inherent right to opacity. They do not need to be fully understood according to external terms in order to be valued or engaged. For Glissant opacity maintains the integrity of difference without the compulsion toward reduction. An African gnosis operates within this field of opacity, an embodied and intuitive mode of knowing that exceeds empirical comprehension and renders the question “What is Africa?” a hopelessly naïve and impossible question. An African gnosis presents a strange knowing and a strange language that moves beyond Western sensibilities. &nbsp; <img width="800" height="800" width_o="800" height_o="800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/34101501c0ee76eb6a8642cd0e81a73d00ee2918ea8a4f0bb471f1f81c9bf5ae/Figure-1.png" data-mid="243709075" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/800/i/34101501c0ee76eb6a8642cd0e81a73d00ee2918ea8a4f0bb471f1f81c9bf5ae/Figure-1.png" /> Accumulation: Power and Display in African Sculpture, ArtForum. 1975. The phrase a ‘Strange Language’, framed through Mudimbe’s articulation of African gnosis, offers a conceptual grounding for my work and for my methodology as an architect- artist-researcher. My practice, across material, filmic, and spatial manifestations emerges from an ongoing preoccupation with ‘language’ and what it means to communicate through material creations. The work treats design as a linguistic act: a means of telling stories, revealing structures of value, and exposing the hierarchies that organise everyday life. Through this linguistic act design also becomes a conduit through which emotion can be transferred and felt, sensed or interpreted by those who encounter the work. The idea of a language is central to how I make and what I make. As a result of this interest what has concerned me and by extension my practice is what occurs when the language of a made-thing sits outside registers of familiarity, what emerges as a result of this unfamiliarity and what such unfamiliarity reveals about the assumptions through which we apprehend the world. Strangeness arises at the edge of familiarity, when a form, gesture, or material vocabulary appears outside one’s frame of reference and unsettles habitual ways of reading the world. It introduces a different point of orientation. The perceived strangeness attributed to Africa and its material culture within art and design has long been constructed through an external gaze, particularly a Western gaze that encountered African objects from a position of unfamiliarity. Strangeness is not inherent to the objects themselves. It emerges through perceptual dissonance, in which Western aesthetic sensibilities struggle to apprehend forms rooted in different cultural logics. Masks, stools, anthropomorphic figures, and zoomorphic forms sat outside Western legibility and were classified as strange or alien. Even as these objects were decontextualised and removed from the worlds that generated them to satisfy European appetites for African curiosities, certain materials such as bone, raffia, pigments, or traces of blood were considered too unsettling and were removed and discarded in passage to European collections. They were made un-strange whenever their material assemblages proved disconcerting for a European eye. This management of strangeness is inseparable from processes of othering, in which African objects and bodies were designated as curiosities or as other, reinforcing a binary through which the European self-defined itself against a constructed alterity. As Stuart Hall argues in the chapter The Spectacle of the ‘Other’, dominant cultures stabilise their authority by producing such binaries, depicting the other as foreign, deviant, or enigmatic, and in doing so, naturalising hierarchies of power. <img width="500" height="376" width_o="500" height_o="376" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/338253a065ae2fe09b60a2426ea05fcd146522edd50ef2c1b59aa1a24464ebaa/Figure-9.-Noire-et-Blanche--Man-Ray-1926.jpg" data-mid="243709077" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/500/i/338253a065ae2fe09b60a2426ea05fcd146522edd50ef2c1b59aa1a24464ebaa/Figure-9.-Noire-et-Blanche--Man-Ray-1926.jpg" /> Noire et Blanche, Man Ray 1926 Strangeness surfaces in that moment of encounter, when the subject meets an object that speaks a different language. In that moment of attempted comprehension, perception reaches outward and meets a presence that withholds full legibility. This strangeness initiates an exchange, yet the exchange should not require clarification. It may remain opaque, allowing the encounter to unfold without the obligation of explanation. A friend and collaborator, Jonah Luswata, an architect and artist from African heritage, articulated the significance of this disruption in a conversation we had about the role of my practice as a whole—but specifically about&nbsp;SERWAA, a 6 legged reimagination of a traditional Lobi chair, SERWAA’s need to disturb and distort as a means of establishing a language in opposition to the contemporary Western design canon. Jonah said: “I think the more your language is un-understandable the better. It should be strange and perverse and different—and markedly so. In that, it acts as a little violence. Small acts of violence—they are reneging on the canon of received formalities. I think a six-legged stool is better than a four.” A six-legged object defies the logic of nature and familiarity. No mammal moves on six legs. The six-legged belongs to the insect world, the alien, the otherworldly. The six-legged stool is therefore inherently strange, an object positioned outside the natural order. It disrupts expectation and creates tension between balance and excess, structure and absurdity. The form proposes an act of distortion in which something has been added, extended, or deformed beyond perceived necessity. It introduces unease, a liminal presence in which the practical becomes uncanny and the familiar carries an undercurrent of dissonance. This proposition, that strangeness and distortion can operate as tools of critique, is central to my work and central to SERWAA: a deliberate manipulation of form to invoke a certain surrealness. <img width="3213" height="4016" width_o="3213" height_o="4016" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7c5cf6a1c40d131b90aa6327cfa528b2dfadb93c7a5e1597fea76a36c46f56b7/SERWAA-05_Giles-T-Nartey_Image-by-Giles-T-Nartey.png" data-mid="243709083" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7c5cf6a1c40d131b90aa6327cfa528b2dfadb93c7a5e1597fea76a36c46f56b7/SERWAA-05_Giles-T-Nartey_Image-by-Giles-T-Nartey.png" /> SERWAA, Giles Tettey Nartey, 2024 This surrealness has deep precedent in West African sculptural traditions, where deliberate distortion of the human figure or everyday objects expresses local and regional beliefs. These design practices use distortion as a mode of storytelling, spiritual invocation, and social commentary. In contrast to European traditions that have historically prioritised precision, realism, and accurate representation of the observable world, African craft and visual culture often employ asymmetry, elongation, fragmentation, and abstraction. This intentional and embodied strangeness offers insight into cultural worldviews, folk philosophical understandings, and symbolic meanings embedded within materials and forms. Distorted forms operate as tools for interpreting the values, priorities, and metaphysical orientations of particular communities. This logic extends to the body itself, where additions, adjustments, and transformations such as scarification or the elongation of the neck function as cultural expressions that reflect social ideals, identities, and cosmological orientations. It could be said Western design conventions privilege rationality, clarity, and legibility. Form is expected to follow function, and objects are expected to be useful and immediately intelligible. A six-legged stool violates this order. It introduces an opacity. The six-legged form exists as a deliberate rejection of the idea that African design must conform to a Western canon. It asserts a different design language, one that embraces ambiguity. The sixth leg is not concerned with stability; it is concerned with presence. So how do we register the strange? A recent work Strange Notes&nbsp;takes shape through this sensibility. The work is a contemporary reimagination of a west African balafon, composed of steel bars suspended over ceramic vessels held up by oak legs. Each component is tuned not through scientific calibration but through relation. Bar to vessel, hand to material, room to listener. The instrument is held together not by precision but by attunement. The work insists that very specific state where sound becomes music arises from encounter rather than from fixed measures. What is heard is contingent on proximity, weight, vibration, and the embodied gesture of the person who strikes the bar. In this way,&nbsp;Strange Notes&nbsp;becomes a study in relational acoustics, where strangeness appears as tonal deviation, as the excess or remainder produced when things come into contact. <img width="3953" height="4941" width_o="3953" height_o="4941" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/69d1ab8d35f3f1514d537c749719fc157a048a23e16a1ca46691b064e39a8f4d/Figure-16--Strange-Notes_Image-by-Giles-T-Nartey-4.png" data-mid="243709081" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/69d1ab8d35f3f1514d537c749719fc157a048a23e16a1ca46691b064e39a8f4d/Figure-16--Strange-Notes_Image-by-Giles-T-Nartey-4.png" /> Strange Notes, Giles Tettey Nartey, 2025 The title draws from Christina Sharpe’s&nbsp;Ordinary Notes, which positions the note as a form of Black thought, a vessel for memory, and a mode through which the everyday becomes a site of Black knowledge-making. Sharpe shows how notes hold what cannot be fully systematised: they carry fragments, impressions, refusals, and intensities that resist the coherence demanded by dominant epistemologies. In my conception, the note is both sound and thought. It is a form of thinking that does not rely on linearity or transparency. To invoke the note is to invoke a way of attending to the world that values resonance over clarity, texture over definition. Within this project, strangeness becomes a register in its own right. It is a mode in which calibration is not empirical or absolute but felt. Strangeness is sensed rather than measured, received rather than decoded. It emerges when something sits outside familiar coordinates, when an encounter resists easy legibility. The strange unsettles the canon. This disruption is not an error but a mode of knowledge. It marks the moment where perception loosens, where the boundaries of comprehension give way to forms of sensing that exceed the empirical. <img width="3500" height="2467" width_o="3500" height_o="2467" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7d05bbbf71d1ec97090b727ae34cc1dee54645d3f145aaee946ce71ef604cb4f/Figure-11.jpg" data-mid="243709078" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7d05bbbf71d1ec97090b727ae34cc1dee54645d3f145aaee946ce71ef604cb4f/Figure-11.jpg" /> A tribal orchestra on the Lulua River, Congo, Kazimierz Nowak, 1935 The work proposes that strange notes are not manufactured but found. They emerge in the moment when material, body, and space align in ways that cannot be predicted or fully controlled. To register the strange is to listen differently. It requires an openness to frequencies that fall outside standard harmonics, to resonances that signal unfamiliar relations between matter and meaning. Strange notes mirror the larger epistemological claims of African gnosis and Glissantian opacity: knowledge does not need to be transparent to be present. It can be felt, sensed, and carried in sound, form, and relation. By drawing on Sharpe’s reflections, the work positions strangeness as a legitimate mode of encountering the world. It frames the strange not as a deviation from knowledge but as a knowledge practice in itself. To register the strange is to recognise that understanding may arise through intuition and resonance rather than through understanding. It invites us into a different kind of listening. Strange notes lead us toward the broader question of how strangeness is held, materialised, and transmitted, whether through objects, gestures, or inscriptions. On 4 February 2025, during a conversation between the late Cameroonian Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh and artist Kendell Geers, Koyo reflected on the foundations of artistic practice as inseparable from the foundations of humanity. She proposed that humans orient themselves in the world through two enduring capacities: the making of objects and the making of scriptures. “We are made of objects and scriptures,” she said. “From ancient times, as we were becoming sapiens, we have made tools and objects. And our capacity to imagine and conceptualise writing and language will never change. We will always make objects and scriptures, and this is what I think makes us human.” These capacities shape how thought takes form. The making of objects reflects our ability to produce tools, artefacts, and material structures that carry utilitarian, symbolic, and aesthetic significance. The creation of scriptures describes our capacity for abstraction through language, writing, and notation. Objects function as material extensions of thought, while scripture codifies thought through symbolic systems. Together, they allow us to narrate the past, inhabit the present, and imagine the future. <img width="1404" height="1812" width_o="1404" height_o="1812" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ef3a876266340ed093901c30412f5dde89c106406d6a4de02fd0c231a7b81617/Figure-2.png" data-mid="243709076" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ef3a876266340ed093901c30412f5dde89c106406d6a4de02fd0c231a7b81617/Figure-2.png" /> Accumulation: Power and Display in African Sculpture, ArtForum. 1975. The relation between these capacities becomes even more legible when read through the conjunction of&nbsp;poesis&nbsp;and the earlier discussion of&nbsp;gnosis. Whereas Koyo identifies the forms through which thought is externalised,&nbsp;poesis and&nbsp;gnosis&nbsp;describe the processes through which those forms come into being and acquire meaning.&nbsp;Poesis&nbsp;names the act of bringing something into existence, the world-forming labour of making.&nbsp;Gnosis&nbsp;names an embodied, intuitive mode of knowing that arises through practice, relation, and experience. Together, they unsettle inherited divisions between theory and practice, language and material, intellect and embodied action. They suggest that making can be a site of revelation, and that knowledge need not be transparent or empirical to hold value. They name the movement from the immaterial into the material, from sensing into form. They describe a mode of making in which knowledge is generated, held, and communicated without needing to be fully grasped. A strange language grounded in a strange knowing. <img width="3878" height="5170" width_o="3878" height_o="5170" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c27fc15db60f80c83769d9c7111dd6d6822a8c858456361f785e7f242eeb67d6/Figure-15.-Strange-Notes_Image-by-Giles-T-Nartey.png" data-mid="243709080" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c27fc15db60f80c83769d9c7111dd6d6822a8c858456361f785e7f242eeb67d6/Figure-15.-Strange-Notes_Image-by-Giles-T-Nartey.png" /> Strange Notes, Giles Tettey Nartey, 2025 1 &nbsp;V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge, African Systems of Thought (Indiana University Press, 1988) 2 V. Y. Mudimbe, ‘African Gnosis Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge: An Introduction’, African Studies Review 28, no. 2/3 (1985): 149–233 3 Édouard Glissant and Betsy Wing, Poetics of Relation (University of Michigan Press, 1997). 4 Julia Kelly, ‘The Ethnographic Turn’, in A Companion to Dada and Surrealism (John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd, 2016). 5 S. Hall and O. University, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, COMM1107: (SAGE Publications, 1997). 6 S.P. Blier, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power (University of Chicago Press, 1995). 7C. Sharpe, Ordinary Notes (Daunt Books, 2023). Credits:Images courtesy of Giles Tettey NarteyDownload PDF: Get this article in print21 January 2026Share: Email, Instagram, WhatsApp Okra AgencySwalmstraat 2A 1079 ZN Amsterdam EssayInterviewResearchVisualProjectIndex AgencyContactInstagram Journal © 2026 Okra Agency All Rights Reserved https://okra-agency.com/Summoned-From-Obscurity Wed, 26 Nov 2025 10:26:40 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/Summoned-From-Obscurity Summoned From Obscurity: Reflections on the Colonial Depot By Tamarah Kerr de Haan, on the work of Mirelle van Tulder <img width="3840" height="2160" width_o="3840" height_o="2160" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1c1b524f9dadb20b48f0137f7009d9da3f94196dbdb1bcb454fb7e20d6a37ce3/MAIN_BPE-Finals-Online-Version-Uncompressed-Picture-Locked-Copy-320.jpg" data-mid="243722866" border="0" data-scale="66" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1c1b524f9dadb20b48f0137f7009d9da3f94196dbdb1bcb454fb7e20d6a37ce3/MAIN_BPE-Finals-Online-Version-Uncompressed-Picture-Locked-Copy-320.jpg" /> &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; What are we even witnessing here…I wondered while walking past these countless relational materials. As my eyes followed the ocean-blue metal frames stretching into the distance, the question itself seemed quite hopeless in its formulation. Only when the wheel attached to each rack is manually turned does the metre-long passage between the racks appear, and even more vessels emerge from their enduring enclosure. The ocean-blue racks form the skeletal foundation of the depot, assembling the shelves, each bearing the weight of histories, memories, dispossession, dis- and non-placement. ‘Object’ upon ‘object’, each tagged with minimal description: country of origin, an alphanumeric code, a barcode, and words such as ‘statue’, ‘mask’, ‘head cover’, ‘ancestral effigy’, ‘human skeletal remains from excavation in [...]’… Upon entering the first building, I could already sense a visual crisis awaiting me (knowing there were three more to come). By the time we reached the third building, I was already undone, not by what was seen but by the impossibility of seeing. After the overwhelming visibility in the first and second buildings, a paradox emerged here in the third building. Suddenly, the flood of vision seemed to drown perception itself. It was a lot to take in, too much for just an afternoon visit. The excess of materiality began to create an incomprehensible void, not only in the spatiality of the warehouse but also within myself. As I moved through the third warehouse, having now wandered three-quarters of the 4,000-square-metre depot, I no longer knew where to look. There were just so many forms, so many shapes, smells, and silences… The air in these spaces felt thick with something unspeakable. It was here, in this third building, that I realised each building carried its distinct scent. I still remember the pungent, earthy food-like odour that lingered in the air of one of the buildings. It was a scent shaped by the many artefacts crafted from cloves. I remember how, after I commented on the smell, the depot worker guiding us said matter-of-factly, ‘This building smells like Indonesia.’ After viewing Mirelle van Tulder’s 2024 short documentary, Being Part European, filmed inside the depot of the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures (Wereldmuseum), I was deeply affected by what she had created. For the first time, someone was granted access to film within these secretive walls. Mirelle undertook the crucial task of uncovering who/what is actually being referred to when we speak of colonial art restitution. The film visualises that the conversation extends far beyond what museums display publicly, as entire nonworlds exist, clustered with material presences kept in silence. When Mirelle asked if I wanted to visit the depot for this essay, I had no idea what to expect. I had already watched the film several times and seen images of what lies hidden there while browsing through the online archive, but nothing could have prepared me for the vastness of what I encountered. Entering the depot was an overwhelming experience. It was an encounter marked by the limits of vision and the opening of something else. In the presence of these ancestral traces, a quiet hope stirred in me, even as the setting itself evoked a sense of hopelessness and of feeling trapped. I felt discombobulated, unable to make sense of myself or these material, perhaps spiritual, witnesses. Towards the end of my visit, without thinking, while walking around the fourth and final building of the depot, I began to hum… softly, instinctively. I sang a song of waters and freedom, which I had first heard about a year prior in a one-night live performance and which has stayed with me ever since. The sounds of this choir deeply engaged with the remembrance of this tear in the world—that is, the Maafa4, the horrific disaster of the Middle Passage, and the continuation of its wake, in other words, the enduring afterlife of its violence in the present. In this depot, one does not so much enter as become entangled. Here, in this space—a confluence of silences and shadows, structures that conceal chaos, relics (that have survived) whose origins disobey accurate naming—colonial time coils, not as memory but as omission. What is possessed is also disavowed. In the colonial depot, sovereignty flickers…; claimed, fragmented, withheld. The place is structured yet chaotic, filled with material presences both foreign and ancient, all cluttered on shelves, hidden between others. What is evident is that here lie belongings, some of which require highly skilled craftsmanship, alongside artistic expressions of artistic mastery, or perhaps once sacred vessels used in ritual and spiritual practice. Yet today, it is the unknowable that hums beneath the silence, filling the room with its loud weight. In each of these four warehouses in ’s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands, one quarter of at least 450.000 cultural forms are sequestered from the world, from narrativisation, from cultural memory, from be-longing. The institution hides/stores them in this distant nonplace, which allows roughly twenty-seven visits annually to look behind the walls of its precious treasure chambers of accumulated absence, veiled under the pretence of preservation. As I try to recall the astonishment I felt upon the first viewing of Mirelle’s film, I wonder… what is the appropriate response after being made aware of the existence of such a place? In Being Part European, Mirelle, together with Studio Airport—an interdisciplinary graphic design and film studio—illuminates this secretive repository, guiding us viewers through the hallways between the storage racks. The film offers only fragmented glimpses of what lies hidden in the colonial depot, and with that also reveals the fundamental impossibility of its documentation. Both the lens of the camera and the eye falter before the vastness of what is presented here. Both are incapable of registering and comprehending the actual scope when confronted with the number of material presences on such a scale. As if it is a materiality so vast it almost becomes immaterial-like… it all becomes somewhat of an abstract mass. Yet, Mirelle offers these presences the gift of sound through the plurality of voices reciting Being Part European, a poem by Fijian poet Sam Simpson, from which the film takes its name. Inside the depot, this mass of things flattens specificity. Singularity is lost as they dissolve into accumulation. No one thing can be focused on. Here, everything becomes a blurry mass of material witnesses segregated from cultural life. But not only are they physically removed from public view, these holders are also discursively and emotionally isolated. For they are denied voice, interpretation, and meaning-making, except for the few (academic) researchers granted access each year, although some might argue this still keeps them trapped. As Simpson writes, ‘We have a past, no present, no future. / We live in neither or either, some say’. His words evoke a state of temporal suspension similar to what echoes through the four warehouses of the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures. The poem speaks to a state of extended in-betweenness, a liminal space, neither here nor there. What is kept here exists outside lived experience, as these material presences remain suspended in institutional purgatory. These ancestral materialities inhabit a temporality neither entirely dead nor truly alive. Simpson’s poem voices this colonial condition hauntingly: ‘We die but are not dead. I am afraid. We live but are not alive. I am afraid.’ Being Part European, (the film) sheds light on what is deliberately kept in the dark, making visible an otherwise concealed infrastructure that presents a physical architecture of colonial persistence. Through the film, we witness not colonial history but the ongoingness of coloniality itself. It exposes how these depots constitute not merely storage facilities, but are also active monuments to an epistemic order that obscures whether these cultural forms were brought by missionaries, civil servants, or military expeditions. It obscures whether they were gifted, traded, looted, or stolen. In doing so, this obfuscation of provenance reaffirms the colonial refashioning of cultural theft as preservation, displacement as protection, and silencing as curation. Through the lens of van Tulder’s camera, we therefore confront not only the objectification of lifeforms but also the hidden grammar of power that arranges them.&nbsp; Consider this exhaustive labyrinth of gaining access: almost one year of unanswered and delayed communications, followed by two years of bureaucratic negation before the filmmaker could finally breach these storage buildings of cultural seclusion. In conversation with Mirelle, she speaks of experiencing an institutional fear, which she carefully left vague. However, I observe this anxiety as an echo of the colonial logic’s fear of perpetual vigilance against uprising, the persistent dread that haunts colonial power. It is the fear of never knowing when the subjugated might reclaim what was violently appropriated. Or, in other words, when the colonised might challenge the coloniser’s narrative of authority. I cannot de-link this institutional fear Mirelle experienced, together with the secrecy surrounding these buildings, from the continuation of the colonial fear of being confronted, of being held accountable, of losing control over the narrative.&nbsp; My subjective interpretation should (of course) not exhaust other possibilities; the institution’s hesitant attitude toward visitors may also stem from fears of ‘ritual practices’, concerns about material damage, lack of resources, lack of prioritisation, or perhaps the risk of exposure leading to public criticism. Whatever the reason may be, what remains incontestable is the calculated inaccessibility of the depot, for they exist beyond public awareness, let alone public scrutiny. The depot in ’s-Gravenzande, housing an astonishing 97% of the collection of the Museums of World Cultures, remained long unknown even to scholars engaged with questions of Dutch colonial&nbsp;restitution and cultural heritage. It is nearly impossible to understand this active invisibility as anything other than a foundational feature of continuing coloniality, for it is the institution that has the power to determine what remains unseen, unquestioned, and unaccounted for.&nbsp; The fragments offered by the film highlight the fundamental partiality and incompleteness inherent in any attempt to know or represent such an immense repository of dispossession. As the camera performs its slow, contemplative movement across the dispossessed artefacts, it offers a fleeting moment of encounter before revealing another frame where more artefacts emerge from darkness. Each transition between frames feels like an interruption, forcing viewers to break the continuity of the moment that came before. It is like a visual rhythm, a choreography of appearance and disappearance, moving between revelation and concealment. What Mirelle strikingly manages to present is the limits of knowing, not mastery but disorientation. In my experience, the film therefore feels less like documentation and more like an initiation. It is a first step into an archive of absence, an orienting gesture toward that which was kept from orientation.&nbsp; Being Part European invites us into the work of confronting what the project of modernity and coloniality has simultaneously preserved and erased. Mirelle approaches this work with care, resisting spectacle and refusing to provoke the gazing, spectator-object dynamic we are all too familiar with. To engage with these ancestral presences, be it through the film, is to consider the very conditions under which we think, as these presences embody the impossibility of tracing back linearity. Simpson’s poem reminds us, ‘We came from nowhere. / We belong to no one. / We belong to nowhere’. His words extend beyond diasporic subjectivity, as these displaced cultural forms share this fate. These ancestral presences, too, carry with them entangled lineages, ‘a white ancestor, / a black ancestor, / a colourful ancestor’. Their trajectories of dispossession render them irrevocably transformed. For now, they remain suspended between worlds, ‘between either or neither, / between either and or,’ lost in the nonworld that is the depot. What then is to become of these cultural materials? Is their destiny forever contained within these hidden walls, arranged yet clustered upon metal racks, occasionally summoned from obscurity when their presence serves the thematic needs of an exhibition somewhere? The question of colonial art restitution has been reverberating throughout Europe from different angles. Between 90 and 95 per cent of all cultural artefacts originating in sub-Saharan Africa reside not in the spatial location of their cultures of creation, where they once had purpose, and perhaps now could be(come) keys to a past. Instead, they are hidden somewhere within European institutional walls or perhaps in some private collection; who knows? While advocates of postcolonial restitution campaign for the return of artefacts to their countries of origin, others question whether such simplicity is complicit in masking contemporary colonial complexities. What precisely constitutes return? Is it a matter of state-to-state transfer or between cultural institutions? What about cultural inheritances arriving in settler-colonial states or contemporary regimes long alienated and detached from the contexts that produced these artefacts? Should restitution not also be possible to the originating cultures? But how might this even be accomplished when international legal frameworks currently only recognise state to (origin) state transfer10? Should this conversation in the West not begin with a reckoning with who ‘we’ are in this context and what the position of this Western ‘we’ should and can be in this practice? What happens if we (the West) stop speaking and start listening? Because how can a Western institution approach the question of restitution decolonially while still positioning itself as the central, authoritative voice that continues to reproduce the hegemonic order? The standard argument is that the matter is complex. And yes, it can be. But is it always? Must we not wonder? Or does the invocation of complexity serve as yet another colonial waiting room? Is this the familiar tactic of deferral that delays action whilst maintaining Western institutional control? The institutional fear that surrounds these materials (that is, the reluctance to grant access, to acknowledge their existence, and to keep information hidden) suggests an unspoken recognition of this power. Even in their very silence, these ancestors speak volumes. They testify to the colonial foundations upon which European modernity built itself. It is precisely from this condition that the histories they interrupt and the futures they invoke become legible. In their suspended presence in the colonial depot, they already hold keys: to what has been lost, to imagining otherwise, and to what may become. Such recognition invites us to feel/think with and through their rootlessness: to sense here not lack, but the profound potential for otherwise-ways of coming and being together. Mirelle’s work beautifully voices these suspended ancestral presences through Simpson’s words, capturing the difficulty of inhabiting this imposed in-betweenness. And so I end, not with resolution, but with the practice of the question—an invitation to wonder together where this moment leaves us and might lead. A longer version of this essay was first published in Emptying the Shelves, Roots to Fruits &amp; Framer Framed, 2025. 1Today, the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures consists of several institutions: Wereldmuseum Leiden (formerly the Museum Volkenkunde, National Museum of Ethnology, until its renaming in 2023); Wereldmuseum Amsterdam (previously the Tropenmuseum, Museum of the Tropics, initially founded in 1864 as the Koloniaal Museum, Colonial Museum); and Wereldmuseum Rotterdam (formerly the Museum voor Land- en Volkenkunde, Museum of Geography and Ethnology). The organisation also included the now-closed Wereldmuseum Berg en Dal, formerly the Afrika Museum. 2 Chorus in Flight (2024) was a choir performance developed by Julianknxx and The Memoria Collective, Metro54 and presented at Buro Stedelijk in Amsterdam. 3&nbsp; Refers to Dionne Brand’s idea of the ongoing rupture caused by slavery and colonialism. 4 The term Maafa is a Kiswahili word meaning ‘great disaster,’ ‘horrific tragedy’, or ‘terrible occurrence,’ and refers to the period of the Middle Passage or the transatlantic slave trade. 5 The idea of the wake draws from Christina Sharpe’s articulation of living in the afterlife of slavery, where the enduring reality of historical and structural violence shapes Black life. 6 11 visits recorded in 2024; 27 visits recorded in 2023 (source: Wereldmuseum). &nbsp; 7 Studio Airport is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and works at the intersection of graphic design and film. 8 In conversation, Mirelle told me how, after the closure of the KIT (Royal Tropical Institute) library in Amsterdam in 2013, she was able to collect numerous catalogs and magazines. Among these, she came across Being Part European, a 1974 poem by Fijian poet Sam Simpson. She felt a deep connection to the poem, as it resonated with her own context. In her efforts to connect with Simpson, she has even traveled to Fiji in 2017, though she has not yet been able to locate him or his family members. 9 Alain Godonou, then Director of the Porto Novo School of African Heritage in Benin, stated at the UNESCO Forum on Memory and Universality (UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, February 5, 2007): ‘Indeed, the position of the African countries and, in particular, those south of the Sahara, obviously excluding Egypt, is very different. We have sustained massive losses in quantitative and qualitative terms. I think, statistically speaking, on the basis of the inventories of the collections of all African museums, which amount, for the larger collections, to about 3,000 to 5,000 items, it is fair to say that 90 per cent to 95 per cent of the African heritage is to be found outside the continent in the major world museums.’ See Alain Godonou, ‘Museums, Memory and Universality,’ UNESCO Forum on Memory and Universality, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, February 5, 2007, in Lyndel V. Prott (ed.), Witnesses to History: A Compendium of Documents and Writings on the Return of Cultural Objects (Paris: UNESCO, 2009), 61–64. 10 UNESCO’s ‘Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation’ (ICPRCP) facilitates the return of cultural property primarily through bilateral negotiations between states. While it offers mediation and advisory services, it lacks the legal authority to decide cases. International frameworks currently recognise restitution claims only between states, not between states and cultural communities, private institutions, or individuals. See UNESCO, Return &amp; Restitution Intergovernmental Committee, last updated 28 November 2024, https://www.unesco.org/en/fight-illicit-trafficking/return-and-restitution. Credits:Essay by Tamarah Kerr de Haan
Originally published in Emptying the Shelves, Roots to Fruits &amp; Framer Framed, 2025 (longer version) Being Part European (2024), a film by Mirelle van Tulder
In collaboration with Studio Airport
Based on the poem Being Part European (1974) by Sam SimpsonDownload PDF: Get this article in print21 January 2026Share: Email, Instagram, WhatsApp Okra AgencySwalmstraat 2A 1079 ZN Amsterdam EssayInterviewResearchVisualProjectIndex Agency Contact Instagram Journal © 2026 Okra Agency All Rights Reserved https://okra-agency.com/No-Lubida-Mi Mon, 15 Dec 2025 02:32:57 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/No-Lubida-Mi No Lubida Mi The monobloc not just as an object, but as a quiet witness to belonging, memory, and cultural continuation. By Lilly Alexandra <img width="4000" height="6016" width_o="4000" height_o="6016" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f157abfadbef0fa7dcc1cd7c62bf5a342e87370f8e83dadf3e510533aa790470/1_Repaired-road-side-chair.jpg" data-mid="241817551" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f157abfadbef0fa7dcc1cd7c62bf5a342e87370f8e83dadf3e510533aa790470/1_Repaired-road-side-chair.jpg" /> &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; The Monobloc chair.That white plastic chair. We all know it. You might own one, or even a couple. Pressed from a single piece of plastic, it is one of the most recognisable chairs in the world and one of the most debated objects of modern design. Cheap, mass-produced, nearly indestructible. Loved and loathed in equal measure. I understand the criticism. The chair is everywhere, difficult to escape, cluttering landscapes across the globe. But those same qualities are precisely why it has become so embedded in life on the ABC islands. The Monobloc is resilient. It withstands heat, rain, hurricanes, and salty sea air. It stacks easily, stores neatly, and survives endless use. You will find it at family gatherings, birthday parties, roadside domino games, wakes, political speeches, church events, and school fairs. There is almost always one nearby. My relationship with the chair didn’t begin in theory. It began with observation, with what I kept noticing every time I returned home. Every few years, I return to the ABC islands. I spend time watching how people move through space, how objects are used and reused. One day, I noticed two Monobloc chairs stacked on top of each other at the side of the road. Both were broken. Together, they formed one usable chair again. That moment marked a shift in how the chair could be understood. This gesture goes beyond resourcefulness. It reflects a design logic shaped by survival and care, by generations of making things last and making them matter. In a history where land, language, and identity were never disposable, neither were objects. Reinvention, repair, and reuse were not aesthetic choices, but necessities. Caribbean life has always insisted on continuity under impossible conditions. <img width="6016" height="4000" width_o="6016" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dcbbe8f25fa6e569f78f1a7e93090bf7de11aa63c8b82993fbd4e734f4f6aa20/2_Indestructable.JPG" data-mid="243710190" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dcbbe8f25fa6e569f78f1a7e93090bf7de11aa63c8b82993fbd4e734f4f6aa20/2_Indestructable.JPG" /> From then on, the chairs began to appear everywhere. Alone or clustered, pulled into the shade, flipped upside down to dry after rain. They don’t just mark where something happened; they hold traces of it. A chair by the roadside suggests someone sitting, waiting, thinking. Another person passes, they greet, maybe they sit too. What was solitary becomes shared. These arrangements follow their own rhythm. Casual, familiar, but full of meaning. Even when I arrive after the gathering has ended, I can read the scene through the chairs. For me, their placement often tells more than photographs ever could. Through their stillness, they speak. Returning home can feel like stepping into something mid-conversation. Familiar, but slightly out of sync. There is comfort in sitting in the same chairs, easing back into a rhythm that continued in your absence. Even briefly, you become part of something ongoing: everyday rituals that hold culture together. The Monobloc becomes more than a seat. It becomes a quiet structure for oral tradition to continue, a support for memory, gathering, and relation. <img width="3508" height="4961" width_o="3508" height_o="4961" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8444aa9235c4fb9447387cca1e16ff2a2c82bacaa9ba9211b1a4ea159d6abed6/Untitled-1.jpg" data-mid="241817555" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8444aa9235c4fb9447387cca1e16ff2a2c82bacaa9ba9211b1a4ea159d6abed6/Untitled-1.jpg" /> Chairs that hold people.
 People that hold stories.
 Stories that hold culture. Sculpting memory into form This research explores how the Monobloc chair, often dismissed as a generic global object, operates as a carrier of cultural memory and resilience on the ABC islands. Through sculptural reinterpretations made from chicken wire and plaster, the work reflects on how culture is preserved through repetition, relation, and everyday use rather than formal institutions. The sculptures echo the chair’s presence in communal life. They reference roadside gatherings, family events, and informal spaces where stories circulate. Here, design, memory, and oral tradition intersect as acts of resistance against erasure. Chicken wire is a material deeply tied to home. I remember it from my grandmother’s yard, curled in corners, holding something in or keeping something out. On the islands, it appears everywhere: fencing gardens, reinforcing enclosures, patching boundaries. During the making process, I returned to Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation. The wire’s interlaced structure began to mirror the ideas Glissant describes: strands crossing without merging, distinct yet dependent on tension and relation. The material holds its form by connecting. It is open without collapsing. To me, this flexibility without loss became a tangible expression of Caribbean identity, formed through movement, friction, and continuity over time. Introducing plaster shifted the language of the work. Applied slowly over the wire frame, it softened the form, added weight, and created a sense of protection. But as it dried, cracks appeared. Small fractures formed, and in places the wire began to push back through. Unlike plastic, plaster does not pretend to last forever. It carries its fragility on the surface. This vulnerability became central. Where the wire speaks of resilience and connection, plaster reveals erosion and the risk of forgetting. Like oral tradition, it requires care, repetition, and presence to survive. Still, even as the surface cracks, the structure remains. What fades makes visible what endures. The original Monobloc resists time. It refuses decay. These sculptures allow for change. They make space for softness, vulnerability, and transformation. Memory here does not survive by resisting time, but by moving with it. <img width="2362" height="2362" width_o="2362" height_o="2362" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5f67bfad3f4673168516d33f640b58b2311096e72a349b9ded5f3e380ae7cd48/Artboard-3.jpg" data-mid="243710192" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5f67bfad3f4673168516d33f640b58b2311096e72a349b9ded5f3e380ae7cd48/Artboard-3.jpg" /> Placeholders of memory The installation space is arranged to echo how chairs appear in daily life. Not aligned or frontal, but scattered, paired, angled as if mid-conversation. Some slightly tilted, others clustered, as though people have just stepped away. Gatherings in Caribbean life are rarely formal or fixed. They emerge wherever space allows: backyards, roadsides, verandas, church halls. The Monobloc adapts to this. It does not impose structure; it responds to the lives around it. By recreating this kind of setting, space is held for what happened there. For conversations that linger. For silences that feel full. There is no single focal point. The installation is meant to be moved through, like arriving at a gathering where the voices have quieted but the atmosphere remains. <img width="2327" height="3291" width_o="2327" height_o="3291" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1a3b7560f2500286bb81c638b16c9ed4ea5ad265c9fc5fc4988e6f98e5e88092/3_Part-of-installation.jpg" data-mid="243710191" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1a3b7560f2500286bb81c638b16c9ed4ea5ad265c9fc5fc4988e6f98e5e88092/3_Part-of-installation.jpg" /> To migrate is to carry memory across water. Not just objects, but gestures, rhythms, and stories that were never written down. On the ABC islands, oral tradition was a necessity. Under colonial rule, language and archiving were controlled. What could not be recorded had to be remembered, held in the body, the voice, the gathering. Now living in the Netherlands, the settings change. The chairs move indoors. The materials shift. But the practice continues. Each return carries something back, and each departure brings something forward. No lubidá mi means “don’t forget me.”
For me, it is not nostalgia, but commitment.
To speak, to gather, to remember. The chairs may disappear.
The settings may shift.
But the act of holding space for one another continues. To say no lubidá mi is not a plea.
 It is a promise. Credits: Images courtesy of Lilly Alexandra Download PDF: Get this article in print21 January 2026Share: Email, Instagram, WhatsApp Okra AgencySwalmstraat 2A 1079 ZN Amsterdam EssayInterviewResearchVisualProjectIndex AgencyContactInstagram Journal © 2026 Okra Agency All Rights Reserved https://okra-agency.com/The-Counter-White-Cube Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:32:56 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/The-Counter-White-Cube &nbsp; The Counter-White Cube: Embracing, Ever Touching Blackness By Setareh Noorani &nbsp;<img width="8256" height="5504" width_o="8256" height_o="5504" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/29b75a5ec16a967a88d739ff272f7c00ac3af3d39c0abd6903d8696521c4bd43/MAIN_TPJ_SetarehNoorani-JelmerTeunissen_BuroStedelijk_CentralSpace_HR_16.jpeg" data-mid="243736584" border="0" data-scale="66" alt="Buro Stedelijk (2023). Design by Setareh Noorani and Jelmer Teunissen. Photo: Tom Philip Janssen." data-caption="Buro Stedelijk (2023). Design by Setareh Noorani and Jelmer Teunissen. Photo: Tom Philip Janssen." src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/29b75a5ec16a967a88d739ff272f7c00ac3af3d39c0abd6903d8696521c4bd43/MAIN_TPJ_SetarehNoorani-JelmerTeunissen_BuroStedelijk_CentralSpace_HR_16.jpeg" />Buro Stedelijk (2023). Design by Setareh Noorani and Jelmer Teunissen. Photo: Tom Philip Janssen. Art and architecture museums worldwide have adopted the white-cube as a means to situate and communicate the aesthetics of these practices. However, the universality of these spaces contrasts sharply with the cultural, social, political, and economic specificity needed to experience art and architecture as a true part of the lives, or ‘life’, from which they draw their raison d'être. As early as the 1970s, artists and designers have critiqued the white cube as an assemblage of constructs, where context, time, and space are controlled substances, to which audiences are introduced in carefully measured doses at the will of the museum. These museums are gatekeeping institutions, progressing the white cube experience in a loop of neoliberal cultural consumption: marketed rehearsals of sociality, and art speculation masked as individualised cultural experiences. And, as with every institution concerned with its own lifespan and relevancy, it must absorb the next societal concern. Within its sanitised white walls, it converts this concern into a mirage, devoid of its urgency and, therefore, its proximity to life. In recent years, catalyzed by the George Floyd protests of 2020, Black and PoC (People of Color) representations are increasingly centered in museum spaces, for instance through embedding DEI-policies.These actions cater to a considerably large audience and body of cultural workers that had been previously left unattended. Museum directors were compelled to take a public stand on these matters ('kleur bekennen'): the museum space had explicitly become political, even fashionably so, serving as another possible platform for the people. Now, almost five years later, the uneasy feeling of a backtracking on these progressive politics is palpable. The accusation that museums are ‘woke’ originated in fringe right opinion, but this sentiment has become mainstream amid the current hostile political climate. Because most of these institutions rely on public funding, they are now vulnerable to cuts, especially as international priorities shift and national narratives lean toward conservatism, or worse, fascism. So, museums try to have it both ways: lean into the white cube, as a disciplining environment, a refuge from the complex contexts of life outside of the museum, and to attempt seducing a diverse audience to spend their time, energy, and money inside these walls. Can we ever come to approximate Blackness in museum spaces, if these institutions do not dare let go of the white cube? The verb ‘approximation’ is used intentionally here, as it does not consent to absorption, co-optation, or touch that negates the self and other, as Karen Barad reminds us that in touching there is a gap/void to reckon with that contains all possible other identities, and it can only be achieved by radically opening up oneself. Or to become ‘entangled with’, as Fred Moten invokes Denise Ferreira da Silva, a condition that is “difference without separation”. And so too ‘Blackness’ here is meant as a series of actions and rituals, fugitive at best, blurring what the institution intends to separate and enforce in neat aesthetic categories within a white cube; Blackness as entangled with whiteness by way of resistance. <img width="2048" height="1365" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/620310254ac6e9b662902fdc481576ec3b40e0404345b785ec60cb8eb73b0aeb/ZoeZandwijken_TBA_Installatieshots_ZwartManifest_Online08.jpg" data-mid="243736586" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/620310254ac6e9b662902fdc481576ec3b40e0404345b785ec60cb8eb73b0aeb/ZoeZandwijken_TBA_Installatieshots_ZwartManifest_Online08.jpg" /> Zwart Manifest, The Black Archives, OSCAM. Exhibition design and scenography of art works by Setareh Noorani and Jelmer Teunissen. Photo: Zoë Zandwijken This essay proposes that practicing ‘Blackness’, spatially and aesthetically, allows architects, designers, artists, and museum and cultural workers to ally differently and generously, with life and along life-affirming topics. This allyship must go beyond the façade representation of Black and PoC viewership, which easily can be absorbed by the white cube. These are representations where stereotypical Black forms of spatial gathering (like the stoop, porch, hair salons, and dance festivals) are co-opted to merely appear ‘in step with The Culture.’ This risks flattening the complex, layered experiences of a diverse, typically Othered, diasporic audience into one that is merely 'understood' and 'spoken to' via the devices of Hip Hop Culture and Afro-American life. The core question is: How might museums relate differently to Blackness, not as a consumable trend, but as something carrying the real political implication of solidarity with generative difference? As an author based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and brought up in the distinct subtleties of a Dutch Black experience, I must consider the limitations of a universal Black experience, especially one solely tied to a Transatlantic history. Moreover, this essay draws upon my work as an architect and museum curator to make a definitive claim: we, Black and PoC spatial practitioners and cultural workers, do not need the white cube. To test this position, I engage with Tura Cousins Wilson, Principal Architect of SOCA in Toronto, Canada, whose work is situated on the intersection of art and architecture. Our discussion centers on his experiences challenging this framework and his reflections on Blackness. I also reflect on my experiences with Buro Stedelijk and Metro54, two Dutch-based arts spaces that actively engage the ‘otherwise’. From these, I list strategies that are 'counter' to the white cube and that aim to contaminate the programming and design of these museum spaces. This contamination is achieved by practicing Blackness, not only through visual or spatial interventions (though even shifting form can provoke resistance from practitioners in white cube contexts), but by questioning economies of solidarity, care, display, authorship, and participation. Who builds, sustains, and redefines the white cube, in step with the institution? And can we imagine otherwise, by offering tools and spaces as a way of prefigurative politics? The White Cube Does Not Serve Us The white cube stands in obvious tension with our times, where art and architecture are deeply shaped by politics, in aesthetics, conceptualisation, and social impact. The white cube offers museums non-offensive, non-political (neutral) environments. Environments where Big Art is platformed in its own bubble, divorced from grassroots realities. Yet, at their core, museums are grounded on certain representations, ideas and ideals of modernity and enlightenment-thinking; extractive ideologies still affecting humans and non-human life alike, which makes the white cube not neutral at all. At its core, the white cube upholds whiteness: it symbolically and materially enforces dominant norms, institutionalises white superiority, and renders ‘bodies out of place’. The white cube serves to legitimize the oppression of artists, architects, and cultural workers belonging to a precariat by coercing those who engage with it, through design or display or their work, to tune out the “infrastructure and imbalances” of the museum, and society at large. We live in a society where marginalized lives are continuously put on display for a voyeuristic audience, even as these lives grapple with the daily violence of a white system. Museums attempt to orient themselves toward Black contexts to remain relevant, or as Harry J. Elam jr. writes: “it remains exceedingly attractive and possible in this post-Black, postsoul age of Black cultural traffic to love Black cool and not love Black people.” The question remains: Is Blackness ever sincerely let into their spaces? Given this dynamic, the museum structure does not serve us. How do we disinvest from it? And how do we move, collectively, towards freedom? Like all institutions, museums reflect the narratives, programs, and representations society desires of them; this desire, therefore, must be fundamentally reimagined. Here, I invoke Katherine McKittrick, as she lays out that for this reimagination the extent of Black thought worlds are needed to breach the “heavy weight of dispossession and loss because these narratives (songs, poems, conversations, theories, debates, memories, arts, prompts, curiosities) are embedded with all sorts of liberatory clues and resistances.” These Black worlds are transdisciplinary and translocal by definition, as aesthetic affinities have travelled along the Black Atlantic and Afrasian Sea (Indian Ocean) creating new “centres and margins, inclusions and exclusions; [...] new orientations, relationships, and alignments.” These mergers create new paths for solidarity, even when transposed to the Metropolitan by way of diaspora. They are rhizomatic in nature - boundlessly Black, instead of merely in opposition to the West. They are paths that “[challenge and discard] the universal”, instead believing in opacity as strategy; this is exactly where Blackness becomes incompatible with the transparency and obviousness of the world as told by the white cube. And, importantly, Blackness here can liberate broadly, as it inserts the political implications of radical love, difference, and solidarity and ties it concretely to geographies and spaces for liberation. Building Anew The white cube must be dismantled. In its place a space for conviviality must be built anew. This proposition is, of course, informed by Audre Lorde's famous essay, "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House." Specifically, I am thinking through her statement that we need interdependence and difference that nurtures community. This stands in sharp opposition to the white cube, which represents the extractive and colonial value system of Western institutions that seeks both to pigeonhole identities and extract surplus value from them. Difference is the integral hinge that moves us away from solely thinking about the identity-self, as Katherine McKittrick suggests, and toward thinking of Blackness as a strategy or mode to ensure freedom remains a horizon: rooted in struggle for human and non-human, our lives and the ecologies that surround us. The contemporary cultural landscape offers few spaces that successfully practice this Blackness. Spaces that acknowledge errantry consistent with people’s “will to identity”, or “freedom within particular surroundings”, without falling into the trappings of the “identity-self”, which excludes kinmaking beyond our lives and bodies. In the Netherlands, Metro54 and Buro Stedelijk serve as key examples: two spaces that have built their physical presence in unexpected environments, rhizoming out from their primary locations through temporary interventions amidst the diverse communities they specifically seek to engage. Metro54, for instance, landed at the Westerdok in Amsterdam after years of programming and curating cutting-edge art, sound, and discursive practices throughout the city. The team, represented by Amal Alhaag and Nadine Stijns, curated 'A Funeral For Street Culture' at Framer Framed (2021). This exhibition directly interrogated the position of street culture and the Black experience when Black and PoC bodies are disallowed ownership over these exact streets. The question, “What do we do when the hype dies?” is a prescient one in the light of this essay’s argument. I consider its exhibition design to be one of my more successful collaborations, precisely because of the challenge&nbsp;posed by Amal Alhaag and Nadine Stijns to address the overlap and interrelation of different practices of Blackness. To find refuge in the presentation space of Framer Framed was to turn away from the white cube and understand the space as a holding space for our fragmented, intersecting, errant bodies. Its accompanying design statement articulated this approach: “We locate erasures, enclosures, and vantage points in order to reflect on what we are putting on a pedestal. What are we offering a stage and therefore: what institution are we staging?” <img width="2560" height="1707" width_o="2560" height_o="1707" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c73cc91b8ea2bce24f7d6bf76dbdd475c2ba71508de65c36602b5ff0d5b6e0b3/I1A8564EvaBroekema-1-scaled.jpg" data-mid="243736581" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c73cc91b8ea2bce24f7d6bf76dbdd475c2ba71508de65c36602b5ff0d5b6e0b3/I1A8564EvaBroekema-1-scaled.jpg" /> A Funeral for Street Culture (2021), Metro54, Framer Framed. Exhibition design and scenography of art works by Setareh Noorani and Jelmer Teunissen. Photo: Eva Broekema <img width="2560" height="1707" width_o="2560" height_o="1707" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/439df7f3c4cc8759a8b60bf9b1e8279ca2c8189e74abcebf198c4adf7a1d5add/I1A8702EvaBroekema-scaled.jpg" data-mid="243736582" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/439df7f3c4cc8759a8b60bf9b1e8279ca2c8189e74abcebf198c4adf7a1d5add/I1A8702EvaBroekema-scaled.jpg" /> Pris Roos, ‘'I See I See I See I See Daily Paper, Clan de Banlieue, Sumibu and Concrete Blossom in Rotterdam-West' (2021)’, A Funeral for Street Culture, Metro54, Framer Framed. Exhibition design and scenography of art works by Setareh Noorani and Jelmer Teunissen. Photo: Eva Broekema Buro Stedelijk, in contrast, is nurtured within the confines of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam by a no less dedicated and tight-knit team, including its co-founding curator, project manager, and producers, all indicated as ‘collaborators’ on par with the invited artists and designers. In the first three years with co-founding curator Rita Ouédraogo, Buro Stedelijk extended this horizontality into an ongoing offering of ‘manifestations,’ including talks, design interventions, artworks, and ongoing artist studios. Here again, I was fortunate to design Buro Stedelijk’s first spatial appearance, with my collaborator Jelmer Teunissen. The brief provided an opportunity to rethink what might be needed to rehearse an institution otherwise. What infrastructures are harnessed to enact the porosity needed to dream collective worlds, to hold freedom for each other? Ultimately, Metro54 and Buro Stedelijk are both spaces where practicing conviviality and interdependence inform their programming. Collaborators and internal teams actively work to counter the hierarchy of values attached to titles and visibility, a hierarchy so inherent to the traditional art and architecture world. <img width="2500" height="1667" width_o="2500" height_o="1667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4a53b882fc84f261a8a3606e6a49f4098770f3f09cca076347dc6517486cfa0e/TPJ_SetarehNooraniJelmerTeunissen_BuroStedelijk_CentralSpace_LR_31.jpeg" data-mid="243736585" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4a53b882fc84f261a8a3606e6a49f4098770f3f09cca076347dc6517486cfa0e/TPJ_SetarehNooraniJelmerTeunissen_BuroStedelijk_CentralSpace_LR_31.jpeg" /> Buro Stedelijk (2023). Design by Setareh Noorani and Jelmer Teunissen. Photo: Tom Philip Janssen. <img width="8256" height="5504" width_o="8256" height_o="5504" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/29b75a5ec16a967a88d739ff272f7c00ac3af3d39c0abd6903d8696521c4bd43/MAIN_TPJ_SetarehNoorani-JelmerTeunissen_BuroStedelijk_CentralSpace_HR_16.jpeg" data-mid="243736584" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/29b75a5ec16a967a88d739ff272f7c00ac3af3d39c0abd6903d8696521c4bd43/MAIN_TPJ_SetarehNoorani-JelmerTeunissen_BuroStedelijk_CentralSpace_HR_16.jpeg" /> Buro Stedelijk (2023). Design by Setareh Noorani and Jelmer Teunissen. Photo: Tom Philip Janssen. To reflect upon Blackness practiced outside of the Netherlands, I spoke with Tura Cousins Wilson in Toronto, Canada. He is the principal of the Studio of Contemporary Architecture (SOCA), a practice operating between art and architecture that collaborates with artists like Theaster Gates and Magdalene Odundo. I selected this context because, despite its own colonial history, the city and country possess a Black and PoC demographic not entirely dissimilar from that of the Netherlands. Interestingly, this specific Black and PoC experience is marginalized not only by its position on the edges of the United States but also by grappling with a cultural consciousness built on values of 'tolerance'. This 'tolerance,' much like in the Netherlands, effectively renders the complaints of marginalized persons invisible. Tura Cousins Wilson relays that SOCA's work questions the process and value of institutionalizing, finding merit instead in smaller organizations and their ability to stay nimble. He sees an opportunity for architects to “push beyond the brief” and engage their expertise to welcome additional voices to consult, interact, and make alongside them, thinking about “who can add value to the ongoing conversation.” Cousins Wilson concluded that the white cube “might not be the best venue for [this type of] conversation or engagement.” Institutions at large, he argues, need to consider their position and ability to truly redistribute resources, help build capacity, and move beyond their comfort zones by moving into the locality where the communities they want to engage are found through programming. Cousins Wilson stresses that “Blackness should be the starting point for a much broader conversation [...] and museums need to be thinking about Blackness and that comes with genuine interest and curiosity, as opposed to only hiring and acquiring work.” The multilayeredness of Blackness, he suggests, can bring perspectives relegated to the margins into a broader conversation on stories of life, urbanity, and more. <img width="5592" height="3728" width_o="5592" height_o="3728" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/eba4a1cdc419c70164440f744fdd6acebcb965fc3e1ecd6080ea74580f856fd3/11-23_GardinerMuseum_Odundo-Install-4.jpg" data-mid="243736579" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/eba4a1cdc419c70164440f744fdd6acebcb965fc3e1ecd6080ea74580f856fd3/11-23_GardinerMuseum_Odundo-Install-4.jpg" /> Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto - SOCA designed exhibition. The design transforms the white cube space into a 'clay cube' treating the walls with textured limewash paint and creating broken circular plinths covered in dark plaster which pick up on the metallic quality of Odundo's vessels; Photo by Jack McCombe <img width="1280" height="720" width_o="1280" height_o="720" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7231558380fcdfcf32556deacc8f4816b582fa157519052b1bb62d40147d1267/2314_Burnet-Park_11.png" data-mid="243736580" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7231558380fcdfcf32556deacc8f4816b582fa157519052b1bb62d40147d1267/2314_Burnet-Park_11.png" /> Samuel Adams Memorial, Oakville, Ontario, Canada - SOCA designed a memorial to Samuel Adams, an African American blacksmith who migrated to Canada in the 1850's via the Underground Railroad and settled in Oakville Ontario. The design uses salvaged foundation stones from the recently demolished Adams family home, anchoring the site with authentic material memory. These stones are framed by newly constructed rammed earth walls that evoke permanence and craft. Sculptural iron seating gestures to Adams’ blacksmithing trade and longer histories of African ironwork; Rendering by SOCA The Counter-White Cube SOCA, Metro54, and Buro Stedelijk share a common thread of strategies that are 'counter to' the white cube. These methods prioritize dismantling through active dialogue, undoing frameworks, and reframing relationality - always centering refusal. Their approaches assemble publics that disrupt, move queer, and counter established norms. They refuse to see Blackness as relegated to the margins or the counter-white cube as "separatist spaces," positioning both instead as viable and vital alternatives to traditional institutions of art, architecture, and design.&nbsp; Blackness here is not to be “trafficked” without consent, but a method always in reference to the “history and politics of Black, [marginalized] struggle”. By practicing Blackness, the architectures and infrastructures through which publics can organize and build anew contain instances of prefigurative politics. The counter-white cube, as a spatial proposition, is in lockstep with a program that offers a radical rehearsal of solidarity, of togetherness in difference. It thus adheres to and actively promotes additional values, including: horizontality, communality, civic capacity (civicity), emancipation, autonomy, and opacity. To accomplish integrating these values, a radical porosity, a concept of ‘touching oneself, touching the other’, must be institutionalized. In the counter-white cube, the presence of community is marked as layers of accumulated activity, knowledge, and resources. Porosity, in turn, acts as the agent that allows these layers to leak back into the community. Infrastructure is that which is both questioned, practiced, and actively on display. Aesthetics makes a direct relation with politics. Fred Moten supports this notion of radical sociality. He invokes the Black Panther Bobby Lee, who sought to organize white working-class people into a collective demand and states that in contrast to the separations sought by whiteness, “Blackness blurs by cutting, in touch.” 1 Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, The Lapis Press, 1986, http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/ucal052/99042724.html.; Setareh Noorani, ‘Rehearsing Institutional De-Scripting: A Machine for Manifestations,’ in How We Made Noise: Reimagining the Museum from Within, ed. Rita Ouédraogo. Onomatopee, Buro Stedelijk, 2025. 2 Nesrine Malik, “The Black Lives Matter Era Is Over. It Taught Us the Limits of Diversity for Diversity’s Sake,” The Guardian, October 17, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/20/Black-lives-matter-diversity-racial-equality. 3 Leser, Julia, Alice Millar, Marlena Nikody, and Pia Schramm. 2025. “Right-Wing Populism and Museums: Findings from an Interview Study in the UK, Poland and Germany”. Museum &amp; Society 23 (2):109-25. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v23i2.4526. 4 Karen Barad; On Touching—the Inhuman That Therefore I Am. differences 1 December 2012; 23 (3): 206–223. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-1892943 5 ‘Notes’ in Fred Moten, Black and Blur, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822372226, 313. 6 Moten, Black and Blur. 7 Tura Cousins Wilson, interview by Setareh Noorani, December 2, 2025 8 Nirmal Puwar, ed. Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Angel Court: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004. Accessed November 30, 2025. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474215565. 9 Martin Herbert, “What the ‘White Cube’ Means Now,” ArtReview, January 21, 2021, https://artreview.com/what-the-white-cube-means-now/. 10&nbsp; Harry Justin Elam, “Change Clothes and Go: A Postscript to PostBlackness,” in Black Cultural Traffic, Harry Justin Elam and Kennell Jackson, eds. University of Michigan Press eBooks, 2005, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11883, 386. 11 John Duda, trans., “Gilles Deleuze, ‘Instincts and Institutions,’” InterActivist Info Exchange, 2003, accessed November 11, 2025, http://dev.autonomedia.org/node/2525. 12 Katherine McKittrick, “Curiosities (My Heart Makes My Head Swim).” Dear Science and Other Stories (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), 7. 13 Claire Lubell and Rafico Ruiz, eds., Fugitive Archives: A Sourcebook for Centring Africa in Histories of Architecture (Jap Sam Books, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2023). 14 Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing, University of Michigan Press eBooks, 1997, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10257. &nbsp; 15 Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 20. 16&nbsp; Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House (Penguin Classics, 2018). 17&nbsp; Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 20.; Annie Galvin, “Public Thinker: Katherine McKittrick on Black Methodologies and Other Ways of Being,” Public Books, April 12, 2023, https://www.publicbooks.org/public-thinker-katherine-mckittrick-on-Black-methodologies-and-other-ways-of-being/. 18&nbsp; Framer Framed, “Project: A Funeral for Street Culture; Metro54,” October 7, 2021, https://framerframed.nl/en/exposities/expositie-a-funeral-for-street-culture/. 19 Setareh Noorani, “Metro54 @ Framer Framed – a Funeral for Street Culture (2021),” n.d., https://setarehnoorani.nl/project/metro54-framer-framed-a-funeral-for-street-culture-2021/. 20 Setareh Noorani, ‘Rehearsing Institutional De-Scripting: A Machine for Manifestations,’ in How We Made Noise: Reimagining the Museum from Within, ed. Rita Ouédraogo. Onomatopee, Buro Stedelijk, 2025. 21 Tura Cousins Wilson, interview by Setareh Noorani, December 2, 2025 22 Tura Cousins Wilson, interview by Setareh Noorani, December 2, 2025 23&nbsp; Interview with Salome Asega, Emanuel Admassu, in Where Is Africa?, CARA 24&nbsp; Harry Justin Elam, “Change Clothes and Go: A Postscript to PostBlackness,” in Black Cultural Traffic, Harry Justin Elam and Kennell Jackson, eds. University of Michigan Press eBooks, 2005, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11883, 382. Credits: Images courtesy of Setareh Noorani Download PDF: Get this article in print21 January 2026Share: Email, Instagram, WhatsApp Okra Agency Swalmstraat 2A 1079 ZN Amsterdam EssayInterviewResearchVisualProjectIndex Agency Contact Instagram Journal © 2026 Okra Agency All Rights Reserved https://okra-agency.com/Food-is-carried Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:01:09 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/Food-is-carried Food is CarriedBy Joy Iheoma van Geerestein <img width="1166" height="1556" width_o="1166" height_o="1556" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/201dea662e6e3336ecc577df017a7628d12550cde12eab34795d0db0afebe99e/Screenshot-2026-01-22-at-22.18.49.png" data-mid="243840881" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/201dea662e6e3336ecc577df017a7628d12550cde12eab34795d0db0afebe99e/Screenshot-2026-01-22-at-22.18.49.png" /> Fig 1.&nbsp;Transkei Xhosa , c.1935-77, Photography : McKay, Vernon (Collector) Across generations and borders, over tables and between plates, and through memories, rituals, practices, and culture. Food is carried through both the tangible and the intangible. Carrying food asks something of the body and something of the mind. In terms of the body, head-carrying is one of the oldest and most efficient ways to transport food and other goods. The practice involves placing a bowl, basket, or bundle on the head, often stabilized with a cloth ring. In many African and other traditional contexts, women have historically been responsible for gathering, preparing, and transporting food, water, and household supplies. Carrying on the head allows them to move large or heavy loads efficiently while keeping the hands free for children, tools, or other tasks. The weight is balanced through posture, gait, and careful positioning of the vessel. Knowledge of how to carry is learned through observation and repetition rather than written instruction. The body itself becomes part of the system, and carrying becomes both a skill and a form of design intelligence. The design of head-carrying objects is precise. Bowls favor rounded bases and wide rims, which work together with cloth rings to stabilize the load. Cloth rings come in different forms depending on the type of vessel and its contents. Twisted rings, made by wrapping and twisting fabric into a stiff doughnut shape, distribute weight efficiently and work best for rigid, heavy containers. Folded or soft rings conform to pliable loads like sacks of rice, cushioning and stabilizing objects that shift as the carrier moves. Each bowl and each ring require a slightly different solution, producing a slightly different posture. <img width="2849" height="2880" width_o="2849" height_o="2880" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fe60d88abbd8d0c665e27c23c53cfa6494da5bc5831ce07a1e7ca8bc4dd109f5/Nupe-pot1.jpeg" data-mid="243840878" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fe60d88abbd8d0c665e27c23c53cfa6494da5bc5831ce07a1e7ca8bc4dd109f5/Nupe-pot1.jpeg" /> Fig 2.&nbsp;Nupe terracotta Pot 17, Nigeria. Source: Hamil Gallery <img width="1816" height="1200" width_o="1816" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/de7213e1fd2b643f0930d6214cb6b0c2c47c27ee0db12b1bf025654ad408669e/image-243.png" data-mid="245846132" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/de7213e1fd2b643f0930d6214cb6b0c2c47c27ee0db12b1bf025654ad408669e/image-243.png" />Fig 3. Banana Leaf Head Rings, Kenya. Source: Object lessons The vessel, the ring, and the body function as a single system. The intelligence of carrying is stored in muscle memory, in movement, and in the continual negotiation between object and body. Food carried on the head shows that design exists not only in objects, but also in movement, posture, and care. Bowls, cloth rings, and the body together form a system that allows food to move efficiently and safely. Women have carried this knowledge for generations, translating repeated practice into stability and skill. In this way, carrying food preserves the relationship between body and mind, and shows how objects, bodies, and care remain inseparable in the everyday work of living. <img width="1414" height="1420" width_o="1414" height_o="1420" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/36b7bee8c7aea18bc5b12a5cb90b574e4b5f594b78a8828968a3691b977ea698/Screenshot-2026-01-22-at-22.18.38.png" data-mid="243840880" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/36b7bee8c7aea18bc5b12a5cb90b574e4b5f594b78a8828968a3691b977ea698/Screenshot-2026-01-22-at-22.18.38.png" /> Fig 4.&nbsp;A Lobi woman in Ivory Coast” circa 1960-1970. Photo by: Michel Huet <img width="1178" height="1526" width_o="1178" height_o="1526" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1a81a58afc2079fae06a793454f9b47dbe52733a69a3d4c8a60adfa424b63b24/Screenshot-2026-01-22-at-22.18.31.png" data-mid="243840879" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1a81a58afc2079fae06a793454f9b47dbe52733a69a3d4c8a60adfa424b63b24/Screenshot-2026-01-22-at-22.18.31.png" />Fig 5. A Mosi woman fetching water with a clay jug, south of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) c.1976. Photo: Karl-Heinz Krieg &nbsp;Download PDF: Get this article in print 21 January 2026Share: Email, Instagram, WhatsApp Okra Agency Swalmstraat 2A 1079 ZN Amsterdam EssayInterviewResearchVisualProjectIndex Agency Contact Instagram Journal © 2026 Okra Agency All Rights Reserved https://okra-agency.com/When-the-Shops-Close Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:36:27 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/When-the-Shops-Close &nbsp; When the Shops Close: Informal Spaces and Social Belonging on a Gentrifying StreetBy Elisa Heath &amp; Nora Marica <img width="1239" height="826" width_o="1239" height_o="826" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/252296b6b5a092a0fb3d33c4b2e85439fdf8a7d46b3de5bcb46ce53bea06ac37/MAIN_Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.14.36-kopie-3.jpeg" data-mid="243731887" border="0" data-scale="66" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/252296b6b5a092a0fb3d33c4b2e85439fdf8a7d46b3de5bcb46ce53bea06ac37/MAIN_Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.14.36-kopie-3.jpeg" /> &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Two years ago, we began roaming the streets of our own neighbourhood with new eyes. As part of the IN-FORM-ALL project, which highlights counterpublics between Rotterdam and Johannesburg, we set out to observe informal social spaces embedded in everyday city life. Our focus turned to the Nieuwe Binnenweg, one of the busiest and most rapidly gentrifying streets in Rotterdam West. Gentrification along the Nieuwe Binnenweg is reshaping both the street’s aesthetics and its social fabric. Trendy establishments with curated facades and polished interiors increasingly erode the long-standing places that have defined the character of the street. During the day, these informal spaces are often overshadowed. At night, however, when cafés and shops close, their presence becomes visible, revealing their importance to livability, safety, and social cohesion. Once known as a rougher part of the city, Rotterdam West has in recent years been rebranded as ‘trendy’ and ‘up-and-coming’. While this transformation introduces new amenities such as cafés, boutiques, and lunchrooms, it also carries consequences. Gentrification does not simply add to the urban landscape; it displaces, marginalises, or renders invisible existing communities and the spaces that serve them. The dominance of daytime-oriented, commercial venues diminishes the visibility and perceived value of long-standing community spaces. These spaces come to the foreground at night, when they are the ones that remain. Our visual research documents how gentrification manifests through a distinct visual language. Many new cafés, bars, and shops along the Nieuwe Binnenweg differ from long-standing businesses that have given the street its warm and lively character. Their facades are often white, with black minimalist typography, and their interiors are dominated by wood or stainless steel. This formula, now widespread across the Netherlands, is mostly aimed at young urban professionals. In contrast, businesses such as a Nigerian restaurant and a Syrian supermarket are marked by bold colours, layered signage, and eclectic interiors. <img width="1259" height="839" width_o="1259" height_o="839" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/020fb8b4105db91f44d7c0b61b7ffa68415777bc8f01430d6f5b87ea1f904eea/Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.14.13-kopie.jpeg" data-mid="243731890" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/020fb8b4105db91f44d7c0b61b7ffa68415777bc8f01430d6f5b87ea1f904eea/Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.14.13-kopie.jpeg" /> The coexistence of these places reveals a dichotomy that goes beyond questions of taste. In his book Chromophobia, David Batchelor describes a long-standing Western fear of colour, noting how, since Antiquity, colour has been systematically marginalised, reviled, and degraded. The use of colour has long carried associations of excess, of being “too much”, or of being linked to the “foreign” or the “other”. White, by contrast, has been consistently associated with what is modern, rational, clean, and controlled. Within this context, the dominance of white in buildings and interiors echoes these hierarchies. A clear example of this is the white cube: what was once proposed as a neutral or equalising space ultimately resulted in the exclusion of non-Western aesthetics and traditions. In Rotterdam West, many of the colourful, open-late establishments are run by people with non-Western backgrounds, who themselves or whose families migrated to Rotterdam. When the city “improves” the area with gentrified spaces that echo this chromophobic aesthetic, these places are overshadowed, despite the crucial role they play in fostering community, belonging, and informal care networks. <img width="1121" height="747" width_o="1121" height_o="747" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/79d0f75e445639d4e9f51524ff7f2db16b57d435fc7ab6db675964ed6e267f4c/IMG_3545-kopie.jpeg" data-mid="243731881" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/79d0f75e445639d4e9f51524ff7f2db16b57d435fc7ab6db675964ed6e267f4c/IMG_3545-kopie.jpeg" /> <img width="1035" height="690" width_o="1035" height_o="690" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/93e86553bf74117f2c6d9107ca5dce9af6e9f184bf70a1f7f6761e91bd682eb9/IMG_3577-kopie-1.jpeg" data-mid="243731884" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/93e86553bf74117f2c6d9107ca5dce9af6e9f184bf70a1f7f6761e91bd682eb9/IMG_3577-kopie-1.jpeg" /> <img width="1009" height="673" width_o="1009" height_o="673" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/020af904cad07da5ab313d7e95230195bd214d583172982ed6bfa98b69d71551/Schermafbeelding-2025-12-22-om-13.14.01.jpeg" data-mid="243731895" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/020af904cad07da5ab313d7e95230195bd214d583172982ed6bfa98b69d71551/Schermafbeelding-2025-12-22-om-13.14.01.jpeg" /> Jane Jacobs’ concept of ‘eyes on the street’ offers a useful lens here. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she argues that safety in public space emerges from constant presence and informal social control. During the day, the Nieuwe Binnenweg feels animated and relatively secure. Yet when night falls and many trendy venues close, the true social backbone of the street becomes visible. While the gentrified shops leave behind empty streets, long-standing informal spaces remain active: an Afro barbershop where friends gather to watch football, a night shop still open late, and a shoarma restaurant still serving customers well past regular hours. Their continued presence keeps the street alive, offering safety, familiarity, and a sense of belonging. These places function as the street’s true guardians. <img width="767" height="511" width_o="767" height_o="511" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/434517fd94d6f467a2fa3f9c02922966208b6814f23ed79afa03f4ceb7b6d348/Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.17.23-kopie-1.jpeg" data-mid="243731893" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/767/i/434517fd94d6f467a2fa3f9c02922966208b6814f23ed79afa03f4ceb7b6d348/Schermafbeelding-2025-09-12-om-15.17.23-kopie-1.jpeg" /> <img width="1067" height="711" width_o="1067" height_o="711" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6d61b9e2ccf4c16e6c9ccc5af9721cd79c5b5b34f26571909615c6c0d7a0d260/Schermafbeelding-2025-12-22-om-13.14.52.jpeg" data-mid="243731896" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6d61b9e2ccf4c16e6c9ccc5af9721cd79c5b5b34f26571909615c6c0d7a0d260/Schermafbeelding-2025-12-22-om-13.14.52.jpeg" /> The case of the Nieuwe Binnenweg demonstrates that urban renewal involves more than just physical or economic change. It also entails shifting values, aesthetics, and forms of social cohesion. As trendy cafés, restaurants, and shops dominate the streetscape during the day and contribute to a particular Western urban aesthetic, the diverse and colourful places that are essential for community building and social safety fade into the background. Their value becomes evident only at night, when these community-based places remain as sites of encounter, social control, and belonging. These contrasts reveal that behind the seemingly neutral narrative of improvement lies a system that marginalises not only certain aesthetics, but also the communities and traditions attached to them. It is precisely these informal, often overlooked places that sustain urban life. When the shops close and the street grows quiet, the true spirit of the street, informal, colourful, and communal, emerges and endures. Credits: Images courtesy of Elisa Heath &amp; Nora MaricaDownload PDF: Get this article in print 21 January 2026Share: Email, Instagram, WhatsApp Okra Agency Swalmstraat 2A 1079 ZN Amsterdam EssayInterviewResearchVisualProjectIndex Agency Contact Instagram Journal © 2026 Okra Agency All Rights Reserved https://okra-agency.com/All-Origine Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:09:21 +0000 OKRA https://okra-agency.com/All-Origine &nbsp; All’Origine By Sade Linda Ekwedike <img width="1232" height="1840" width_o="1232" height_o="1840" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8bf5c3129a7b617417e436f982868431429ca406c44b2fcd6b3292d8b4f3b14c/MAIN-IMAGE_CNV000019.jpg" data-mid="243735220" border="0" data-scale="30" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8bf5c3129a7b617417e436f982868431429ca406c44b2fcd6b3292d8b4f3b14c/MAIN-IMAGE_CNV000019.jpg" /> &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; All’Origine is a sculptural installation that explores intimacy through physical closeness and shared orientation, developed through an extended process of making and refinement. Designed by Sade Linda Ekwedike, the work translates a personal mother–daughter relationship into a physical structure that others can enter and experience on their own terms. The piece is built from eight tubular steel elements that can be assembled and disassembled. Its looping form echoes the proportions and relationship between the uterus and ovaries, using circular geometry to speak about origin, connection, and repetition. Designed to exist within a domestic environment, the structure accommodates standard seating and positions two people back to back. Rather than facing each other directly, participants are connected through touch and indirect sightlines. Mirrors placed at either end allow each person to see the other through reflection, acting as a filter for exchange. The work creates a situation where proximity and distance are held at the same time, slowing down interaction and making the body aware of posture, pressure, and presence. This sensitivity is also embedded in the way the work is made. The making process remains visible throughout the work. Bent steel, welded joints, and softened edges emphasise time, labour, and care. All’Origine does not attempt to resolve tension or offer instruction. Instead, it provides a physical framework for sitting together, beginning again, and allowing conversation to unfold gradually. <img width="1232" height="1840" width_o="1232" height_o="1840" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/825209ebe6055cb44e88980a4fde085df0616e2a67ef32966339ab2a945ac2f5/CNV000024.jpg" data-mid="243735215" border="0" data-scale="30" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/825209ebe6055cb44e88980a4fde085df0616e2a67ef32966339ab2a945ac2f5/CNV000024.jpg" /><img width="1232" height="1840" width_o="1232" height_o="1840" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5f604b559d158b16c9b93e5f9e15f1e64ae9b69eb4dfe9687cff35a8b866ae50/CNV000028.jpg" data-mid="243735217" border="0" data-scale="30" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5f604b559d158b16c9b93e5f9e15f1e64ae9b69eb4dfe9687cff35a8b866ae50/CNV000028.jpg" /> <img width="1232" height="1840" width_o="1232" height_o="1840" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2e134ef1fb22b9b1238a4b68d565937b0ae92b2cfa5ef7b3d2155cc8244fe2b2/CNV000025.jpg" data-mid="243735216" border="0" data-scale="30" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2e134ef1fb22b9b1238a4b68d565937b0ae92b2cfa5ef7b3d2155cc8244fe2b2/CNV000025.jpg" /> <img width="1232" height="1840" width_o="1232" height_o="1840" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5f982b5bed371552e49fccf69929aa06c42183e7816a8a69c598af96e6582211/CNV000021.jpg" data-mid="243735214" border="0" data-scale="30" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5f982b5bed371552e49fccf69929aa06c42183e7816a8a69c598af96e6582211/CNV000021.jpg" /> <img width="1200" height="1600" width_o="1200" height_o="1600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/78f4b7958c2c590a1c8ca5aa9eec7213e1b7e5ea1018cd886cc7844240bcd6d4/image00001.jpeg" data-mid="243735219" border="0" data-scale="29" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/78f4b7958c2c590a1c8ca5aa9eec7213e1b7e5ea1018cd886cc7844240bcd6d4/image00001.jpeg" /> <img width="4368" height="3494" width_o="4368" height_o="3494" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/df83b3127de3e9e42168014b904a0aa60491f602e2400b99db8d5823131e6e71/Ekwedike_Sade-Linda_All_Origine_01.jpg.jpg" data-mid="243735218" border="0" data-scale="30" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/df83b3127de3e9e42168014b904a0aa60491f602e2400b99db8d5823131e6e71/Ekwedike_Sade-Linda_All_Origine_01.jpg.jpg" /> Credits: Images courtesy of Sade Linda EkwedikeDownload PDF: Get this article in print 21 January 2026Share: Email, Instagram, WhatsApp Okra Agency Swalmstraat 2A 1079 ZN Amsterdam EssayInterviewResearchVisualProjectIndex Agency Contact Instagram Journal © 2026 Okra Agency All Rights Reserved