A collaboration between SOUTH SOUTH and The Showroom, London, Institutional Hybridity was a talks programme convened by The Showroom Director Elvira Dyangani Ose. This Think Tank aimed to explore strategies and methodologies that various cultural agents around the globe – particularly in its South, or counter-cultural platforms in its North – are considering to strike a balance that is sustainable to their local environments, as well of interest globally. Participants brought expertise through the transdisciplinary aspects of their practices that transcend any specific frameworks. This conversation series sought to offer a look through the myriad of connections and rhizomatic possibilities conceded to such Southernness, as a conceptual paradigm and as the catalyst for a critical and honest engagement to some of the most pressing questions in the field.

Elvira Dyangani Ose is Director of The Showroom, London. She is affiliated to the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths and the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada.

Institutional Hybridity was curated by The Showroom, London with support by The Showroom Curator Katherine Finerty, and SOUTH SOUTH content managers Christa Dee and Lara Koseff.

Forming part of the launch of SOUTH SOUTH VEZA was a dedicated Film Programme curated by Rodrigo Moura. The selection encompassed works both recent and from a not so distant past, ranging themes such as identity, the environment, and spirituality. As the art world lives a digital peak, Moura noted, both artists and audiences alike respond to a new reality in presenting and experiencing moving images online.

Rodrigo Moura is the Chief Curator of El Museo del Barrio in New York City. Previously, he was associate curator of Brazilian art at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) from 2016-2019.

A special OVR, presented by independent Angola-based curators Paula Nascimento and Suzana Sousa, formed part of the launch of SOUTH SOUTH VEZA. This online exhibition was titled Kiximbi, an expression in kimbundu that refers to water spirits, here used to evoke both the power of the waters and of the ancestrals who lost their life in the sea. “Kimbundu is a bantu language spoken in Angola,” the curators explained, “and by using it we embrace language as culture, as a part of culture that still lives today and through history has spread its elements in the diaspora similar to other culture elements such as music, dance or religion.”

Paula Nascimento is an architect and independent curator based in Luanda, with degrees in Architecture, from the AA School of Architecture and the London South Bank University. Suzana Sousa is an Independent curator, writer and researcher. She studied Advanced studies in Anthropology at ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and has a Masters in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Download the pdf on Kiximbi here.

The Fuller Projection Map design is a trademark of the Buckminster Fuller Institute. ©1938, 1967 & 1992. All rights reserved, www.bfi.org.

SOUTH SOUTH uses the Dymaxion map or Fuller Projection Map. This is a projection created by Buckminster Fuller that can be unfolded and flattened to two dimensions. It aimed to address the distortions of other wide-spread projections such as the Mercator map, which have universally shaped senses of geography and geo-politics. In addition, it has no “right” way up and challenges the notion that North is “up” and South is “down”.

Read more here.