Contemporânea

Minia Biabiany: Since I am back  in Guadeloupe, my work has been focusing on the storytelling of this precise territory, on its way of speaking, through voices and silences. It reconnected with the sea while researching on rooted knowledge for the video Toli Toli, the sea understood as one of the places considered as “home”. Often, due to Guadeloupe's political context—as a French Caribbean island, decisions affecting the region are made far away, with little regard for its unique needs, identity, or the intricate systems of interaction between humans and non-humans—there is a pervasive sense of distance or disconnection from the place we live in, and from valuing the experiential knowledge it holds.

When I was searching for a weaving pattern that could embody and carry the narrative of the land, I chose to work with that  of traditional fish traps—known as nasses in French—and to signify them as the voice or speech of the territory. The shapes of the nasses are tightly constrained by their own patterns, so I began to draw other forms that break away from these closed objects. They transformed into woven surfaces—into a story. In the video The Length of My Gaze at Night, the nuclear question I kept circling—how the space around me shapes my thinking, and in turn, how my thoughts shape the spaces and places of the territory—gained clarity when I encountered a quote by Aimé Césaire: “the sea has a taste of ancestors.” I chose to work at the surface of this question—not in a superficial sense, but by inhabiting a space of duality, being both inside and outside, and observing what the sea has to teach me. The surface becomes a point of connection between two spaces. The more-than-human agencies I’m attuned to are now also guiding the next video I’m currently working on.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ book Undrowned has been an invaluable companion, helping me deepen my listening and begin creating new tools of my own. Alongside this, the narrative practices methods developed by the Mexican collective Colectivo de Prácticas Narrativas—rooted in political, ecological, and feminist perspectives—have brought the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea into focus as central spaces for exploring questions of responsibility, history, and my relationship to lineage, both pedagogically and collectively.

MB: My creative process unfolds through two or three cycles simultaneously. As I mentioned earlier, my focus revolves around what is given or taken when information—or a frequency—passes from an inner space to an outer space. By information, I mean a relationship occurring between two or more actors, whether human or non-human, visible or invisible, within our phenomenological world. The practice of listening is an act of attention guided by the desire to understand another story. When I listen to how my thinking is shaped by my surroundings, I increase my chances of understanding both the place and myself—and vice versa. This forms the first, longer cycle: an ongoing, never-ending process. The second, shorter cycle comes when I need to determine the final form of a video or installation. At this stage, I define its movement—where it begins and where it ends.

For example, during the video editing process, the action of weaving guides me to create a pulse—a meeting point between colors, images, sounds, written and spoken words—that were not fertile or opening up before they met. I observe patterns and invent stories that tie and untie themselves with a certain rhythm, gradually revealing where I want the work and its multiple narratives to lead. These stories move in circles; they don’t follow a straight line. The visual language of the work functions through layering these encounters. In other words, within this visual language, words become threads that transform into ceramics or burnt wood—materials that preserve the complexity of our stories. The hierarchy I establish to organize and prioritize what visitors experience within an installation—aimed at building a narrative—is deeply personal. It is my own way of making sense of the many layers.

For the video I’m creating for the Han Nefkens Moving Image Prize, I’m drawing on the therapeutic questioning methods of Narrative Practices—specifically through the feminist, political, and decolonial lens developed by the Mexican collective Colectivo de Prácticas Narrativas. This framing is essential, as storytelling is everywhere, always. Michaël White, the therapist who first developed these methods of listening and inquiry, created what he called maps—guiding frameworks that help the listener ask questions enabling the speaker to unfold and articulate elements, emotions, or decisions that may not have previously been seen as valuable parts of the story. I’m deeply fascinated by space, and by how fluid and changeable it is.

Thanks to a series of interviews focused on people’s relationships with the sea—using the tools of listening we share, and centering their perspectives on the severe chlordecone contamination we continue to live in Guadeloupe as a result of ongoing colonial practices—we are now at the stage of gathering materials. I’m inviting some relatives I’ve spoken with to shape the video collectively. The interviews are not just tools for me; they’re meant to be tools for  all of us. Otherwise, the project risks becoming yet another form of extractivism—drawing from the experiences and beliefs of others without reciprocity.

One of the questions I’ve been exploring—emerging only after listening closely to the individual stories around the sea, land, and people in my immediate surroundings—is a tentative attempt to ask: What would the sea say about the contamination she is experiencing? Of course, this is a human projection onto a non-human entity, just one possible way of listening. Yet, it opens a space for imagining, understanding, or even projecting the sea’s perspective—an act of empathy and relational thinking. I’m still a beginner in Narrative Practices and in learning how to guide others (and myself) toward deeper self-understanding and the release of trauma through the articulation of personal stories prompted by intentional questions. A third cycle in my process might be my own system of forgetting—or rather, my interest about how we consciously or unconsciously choose what to retain or discard from our personal histories.

MB: Opacity and archipelagic thinking have nurtured my work—first in art school, and over the past years. As I came to understand the need to engage with these concepts not only intellectually but also through the body and emotional wisdom, I joined forces with Madeline Jimenez from the Dominican Republic and Ulrik Lopez from Puerto Rico. Together, we created an alternative, collective seminar called Semillero Caribe in 2016, hosted at Cráter Invertido in Mexico City, where we were living at the time. We envisioned a series of sessions rooted in experiential learning—drawing from our diverse interpretations of Caribbean thinkers, not only Glissant. Each session lasted three to four hours, and we worked with a heterogeneous group of participants. We also produced four small publications to accompany our driv—Creole for a meandering, intuitive path—through body, mind, theory, breath, emotion, memory, and trauma. This took shape within the context of Mexico City, at the time marked by a renewed surge in collective movements and  a growing reach of feminist and decolonial thought. Scholars like Catherine Walsh or Yolanda Wood and artists and thinkers like Lena Blou, Paul B. Preciado, Elsa Dorlin were finally beginning to gain broader recognition within artistic discourse.

Another Semillero Caribe session took place earlier this year, this time with fine art students at Cergy, thanks to an invitation from Persona Curada. Designing exercises and experiences around the concept of opacity—and practicing it as a pedagogical tool—has been a key collective moment in deepening our understanding of silence and of the land’s voice, particularly since my return to Guadeloupe. We aim to propose a density of sensation and reflection, embracing the richness of chaos as a way to preserve the complexity of our enunciation—as Caribbeans, in the plural. The concept of Relation is woven through my entire practice; it inhabits my spatial work as a multi-channeled narrative proposition within installations.

The right to opacity, as Glissant names it, remains one of his most generous gifts to the artist I am. It grants me the possibility to navigate my own waters without needing to fully know—or be known by—everyone swimming alongside me. I am in an ongoing process of learning how to co-create, and unlearning extractive mechanisms. The clarity required to articulate intentions and anticipate the possible consequences of being in relation—of listening with the aim of producing with shared authorship—demands deep attention. It involves constant personal reflection, meta-awareness, and a form of sincerity that may also expose wounds or past traumas. It’s a collective movement that begins with intimate commitment—a decision  made not once, but thousands of times to operate a change.

MB: Poeticness—the potency of the poetic—offers a way of relating and understanding through sensibility. Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes, “Breathing is a practice of presence.” I’d like to extend her words and say: an installation, or a video, is a practice of presence. And in a time when our attention is constantly pulled by screens and algorithms, presence remains as political as it has always been. To be present can be transformative. It reconnects us with emotion, with intention. It opens a space for the poetic—not as ornament, but as a force that allows us to relate to what we directly impact, to enter into relations on our own terms. It is a possibility to listen. I speak of potency, not power—not in the sense of domination, but in the sense of possibility. When a story is told, each person hears it differently. That difference is part of what makes listening so vital.

When space invites attention, it invites presence. I am from—and live on—an island governed from 6,000 kilometers away. To observe, closely and consciously, the subtle workings of assimilation and the quiet forms of resistance it meets, calls me to deepen my presence. By being present where I am, maybe I can begin to unravel the ways I have been or  am programmed or colonized. I link this awareness to the poetics of imagination—as a process of resistance. It is a trust in the process itself. In this spirit, I compose, organize, and propose installations or videos as layered spaces of entangled narratives—spaces where stories can be echoed, individually and collectively.

Humans can’t resist the invitation to structure narratives—it’s how we relate. By invoking bodies and senses, we shift the frequency. Storytelling, when approached through poetic lenses, doesn’t need the frame of an exhibition to exist. When I create what I call choreographies for the gazes—gazes in plural, because I refer to more than just sight—my care is in offering and leaving space. Empty space. Like the pauses in the rhythm of breath. 

To engage with the more-than-human, I have come to feel the need to call upon the collective after years of working alone. For the video Our Listening (working title), created for the Han Nefkens Prize, I invited close relatives to collaborate on making a collective work. The most challenging part for me so far is learning to let go of control over the final outcome. When I invite others to watch and to feel, I do so guided by a sense that the work is generous enough—balanced in its depth of questioning—and that those who receive it will be able to engage.

What is a learning tool? It can be anything we choose that creates space for personal understanding alongside collective or ancestral knowledge. We might speak of frequencies, spirituality, or the potency and power of imagination. In my research on water and listening, I revisited the fascinating experiments by Masaru Emoto on water’s ability to retain emotions and intentions. George Lamming defines the sovereignty of imagination as “the free definition and articulation of the collective self, whatever the rigor of external constraints.” As artists, our primary tools are intention and attention.

MB: I had to first clarify my own expectations. Our internal judging filters can protect us by either closing off understanding or, conversely, opening us to new ideas. Célia teaches design arts; Chloé, who is eight years old, loves the sea; Nouma works as an educator in permaculture agriculture; Murielle is a phytochemist and teacher; and I shape my questioning as an artist. All the adults in this group grew up here, left, and chose to return to live in Guadeloupe. Living with frequent water cuts caused by decades of corruption, we are deeply concerned with water—its contamination by plastics and chlordecone, and the more-than-human lives and voices connected to it. Our shared concern centers on holding space. As a mother, the intergenerational perspective on water in our Guadeloupean experience has increasingly informed my reflections on how water is approached culturally. My invitation to the group is tuned to our rhythms and realities, framed within the deadlines of contemporary art. One key proposal is to listen together, repeatedly, while also practicing individual, deeper listening throughout the process. Responsibilities are not equally distributed, but horizontal communication and decision-making guide every step as much as possible.

We’re experimenting with listening—listening to places, more-than-human presences, inner memories, reactions to water, as well as collective thinking—before moving into writing and filming. Alongside this, I am conducting interviews and creating video captions on my own. The process is complex and simultaneous. I continue to assume the role of leading the group, in the sense of ensuring the coherence of the narrative by gathering each member’s feedback and emotions during the video editing. I will not be interviewed myself. The first space we created together was to agree on roles, timelines, and mutual expectations—an important step to avoid extractivism. We have known each other for many years, and this collective space connects us through new individual perspectives while also allowing us, for the first time, to engage together as a collective. This also means our group’s organization is not nuclear but tentacular. Since some members do not identify primarily as artists in relation to their realities, this is very much a learning space—one built on vulnerability and trust, supported by the interviews I conducted using narrative practices.

In narrative practices, documenting someone telling their story is a shared tool—not only to preserve the exact phrasing, but also to hold a space of ongoing experimentation through continual repetition. It creates layers of listening over time and can take many forms. When I reflect on the practice of holding space, two images come to mind. The first is our boat—a floating space that moves, pauses, and finds its direction, guided by, yet resilient against, the shifting winds of emotions, whether joyful or conflicted. The second is being in the water, looking up at the sky, trusting that the space around holds and supports us.

To return to your question, sharing beyond words plays a weaving role between our desires. The possibility of healing is always present, as the Guadeloupean population—whether Afro-Indigenous, Indo, or white—continues to carry deep traumas rooted in the plantation system. Epigenetics shows us that behavioral patterns affect not only individuals but entire families and societal systems. I want to hold space to examine these mechanisms—in conflict, in communication, in self-love, and in the love we give to the place we inhabit and that sustains us. In my practice, I often question how space is written through  the ways we relate to ourselves, because it is here that I find a way to step beyond the confines of French assimilation—the jail that has long defined us. It’s somewhat of a shortcut: to connect to where we are is spiritual because it is about listening to inner and outer space and frequency, and then to the transformative pause in between.

The narrative practices I’m learning from the Colectivo de Prácticas Narrativas offer undercurrents to follow, guided by maps that help suggest where to  shine the spotlight in the stories shared. In other words, these maps assist in moving from one territory to another—the territory of preferred identities, the territory of the problem, the landscape of actions, and the landscape of meanings. They guide the shift from enunciating oneself or ourselves as the problem, to enunciating the problem itself, alongside your or our relationship to it. This process invites a reconsideration of actions as choices made in relation to situations or decisions, grounded in personal values and protective beliefs.

Water influences emotions, and emotions influence water. With Célia, Chloé, Murielle, and Nouma, we swim together almost every time we meet and connect for the project Our Listening. The river and the sea hold a transformative space for us, always.