Period
2018
Proposed by
Cédric Fauq
Location
Guadeloupe
About the project
Doukou is a project exploring the act of learning by using our body perceptions to approach concepts of Caribbean authors. It experiments with the role of sensation and emotions in the mechanism of a horizontal learning process (the knowledge is not given but is created by each participant). This re-appropriation of learning steps induce self-awareness in our (post)colonial capitalist realities from collective and self generated-knowledge perspectives. For example, the Relation (reconsidering meeting and relating with otherness) and the Opacity (reconsidering understanding) of Glissant or the bigidi (reconsidering imbalance) of Lena Blou are notions that once practically explored, can be turned into political tools redefining racial alienation or our understanding of relationships in the capitalist mold.
Doukou works with different formats, always in groups, with sessions between 4 and 7 hours. It can be on short periods (5 days) or spaced working times during a month. It produces body/mind memories, writing, objects, drawings. It aims to move through more islands of the Caribbean next year and to integrate an active investigation on specific pedagogies born in Caribbean contexts, linking art and pedagogy. For now, Doukou has worked with children within primary schools (Guadeloupe, FWI) and with a heterogeneous group of women (Cali, Colombia). This last session in Cali was possible thanks to a collaboration with the curatorial platform Tópicos entre Trópicos and the help of the organization Mas Arte Mas Acción. The project continues soon in the Dominican Republic with an invitation to the Centro León in Santiago.
Doukou means moon phase in creole of Guadeloupe, it is used a lot in agriculture and brings the idea of the right moment to do something.
External links
About the artist
Minia Biabiany's practice explores tensions in the relations of space and the strategies of self-understanding created by the political colonial Guadeloupean context. She works on the deconstruction of narratives by building up a poetic of forms and language in installations, videos, and drawings. She initiated the artistic and pedagogical collective project semillero Caribe in 2016 in Mexico City. She has exhibited internationally, including in the Xth Berlin Biennial and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.
