Summer Lights Transitions I
Guided Tours and Listening Session
10.00-20.00
Save the Date
all ages welcome
in German/in English
Summer Transitions introduces new works that keep transforming the already existing exhibitions XOOK K’IIN perceiving temporalities and U JUUM BÀALAM KAAB the humming of the guardian bee. Works by Maya artist José Chi Dzul and Warli artists Mayur and Tushar Vayeda, show some of the results of our ongoing collaborations, and open up new perspectives, knowledges, and forms of care.
Program:
From 2 pm: Guided tours led by children
From 4 pm: Artist Talk with José Chi Dzul
From 6 pm: Listening at Pungwe Session
Maya artist José Chi Dzul will contribute to the exhibition U JUUM XUNÁAN KAAB the humming of the guardian bee with a mural titled Conexión, that he is realizing on site. It is the outcome of a collaboration with poet Maria Elisa Chavarrea, who in her poem U juum Báalam Kaab, speaks about Melipona-culture in its connection to Maya language, and how their risk of extinction is intimately interconnected. In his painting, José Chi Dzul translates the imagery of words and sounds – playing also with the onomatopoeic elements of Maya language – into colors and geometric forms, using, as he says, “the most intimate part of nature” to visualize the complexity of the web of life we inhabit.
After a five day workshop in Berlin engaging a group of participants into the context, history, spirituality and technique of the Warli writing tradition, Mayur and Tushar Vayeda have also been working on a new piece as a contribution to the exhibition XOKK‘IIN perceiving temporalities. Therein they share their knowledge and experiences on reading signals in nature that are also part of the Warli tradition. On a movable floor-piece, they will narrate stories of rain predictions, such as the Kua birds singing (a type of bird that only appears before the monsoon), the positions of birds nests on trees, the migration of ants, the change of colors of frogs, all through a dialogue with Warli Shaman Shantaram Gurkhanal and farmer Suresh Burge, preservers of these knowledges in the community.
Our conversations with all three artists started already earlier in 2022 and evolved also into a series of workshops around natural pigment making, storytelling traditions and environmental guardianship that took place in their respective local communities in Yucatán and Ganjad.
In the evening the duo Memory Biwa and Robert Machiri, a multidisciplinary collective working between Windhoek (Namibia), Johannesburg (South Africa), and Berlin (Germany) will share a Listening at Pungwe session. Listening at Pungwe is an aural and visual practice that opens up spaces for conviviality. They will dig out of the archive stories and rhythms of land care, of harvesting, of lives in and on earth transmitted through generations in varied songs and multiple languages. Soundsystem: Mi tzi Sound & listening at Pungwe for DAAD Artist in Berlin Program