Melissa Rodrigues (1985)
Portugal

SECTION
From Earth to Space
RESIDENCY (2020)
ZK/U – Centre for Art and Urbanistics
PARTNER
Ideias Emergentes

From the decolonial perspective and having as aesthetic, theoretical and political inspiration in Afrofuturism, the process was a catharsis, a place of reencounter with herself and reconnection with her sorrows and her ancestors. And since everything is movement and everything is connected, in the final phase of the residency, she has the opportunity to collaborate with artists who are part of her network of affections and affinities, Lola Rodrigues, Claire Sivier and Desiree Desmarattes black women, Jade Rocha an indigenous woman and Dori Nigro a non- heteronormative black man, which allowed the project to be again a collective experience.



ARTWORK

CORONAS IN THE SKY, Not a Manifesto! an essay on Afrofuturism and Liberation

Melissa Rodrigues (Cape Verde, 1985)

CORONAS IN THE SKY, Not a Manifesto! an essay on Afrofuturism and Liberation, 2020

Five channel video installation, colour HD, Poem

Various duration:

2’06’’, 1’49’’, 2’06’’, 4’33’’, 3’03’’

 

Melissa Rodrigues is a performer, art educator and anti-racist activist who currently lives and works in Portugal. She uses various media, including video, dance, music, performance and images. During 2020, with ZK/U-Center for Art and Urbanistics, she carried out this project thanks to the collaborations of Lola Rodrigues, Claire Sivier and Desiree Desmarattes black women, Jade Rocha an indigenous woman, and Dori Nigro a non-heteronormative black man. CORONA IN THE SKY is a poem, but also a five channel video, reflecting on the accelerated cycle of natural disasters caused by global warming and late-stage capitalism, where traumas are evoked by the cyclical repetition of the words  “I can’t breathe”. These words were originally told by Eric Garner, an African American man killed by the police in 2014, whose sentence became a slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement. The words create associations with impactful images of cyclical nature that presses on the causality of death. No death is accidental and violence comes back in cycles: violence returns, wounding and killing the same people in a ritualized and nameless form.


VENUE

Kaunas Railway Station


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