News
Research Grant/Residency Awarded by the Berlin Senate Department of Culture
emeka okereke
Sep 3, 2019
"As a visual artist, I am very much engaged with the notion of borders and how, by its operative modes, conversations, tensions and polarities about identities are ignited and shaped. With my work, I have explored this in various forms, contexts and locations mainly between Africa and Europe. I have been particularly inclined towards exploring the place of the body as an “object of useful agitation”
Since 2014, I have been looking into this question especially in the context of Berlin specifically, but also Europe in general. I have created works in such contexts as Marzahn, Hassenheide Park, Kreuzberg/Neukolln. What these works have in common is how they reference the body – an entity imbued with its own language, intuition, history and inscribed violence – that moves through space and time; bending, shaping and responding to the demarcating or intersecting lines made tangible by the sociopolitical realities they are parts of.
Thus, my intention is to expand and build on the work I have already begun in this regard. I would like to further research and create work on spaces of “borderline tensions” and the people whose lives animate and complicate the nature of these spaces. My research will focus mainly on Berlin and the peripheral districts. However, it will equally touch on the Bavarian region of Germany in a bid to better understand the history of migration and identity politics in Germany. With regards to Berlin, my interest is in such places as Neukolln, Kreuzberg and Marzahn. I am equally interested in sites and spaces of “invisibility” similar to Hasenheide, Golitzerpark, etc., and peoples of different communities and affiliations, often regarded as "foreigners", who operate within these space.
The research process will include meetings, interviews, audio and video recordings and writings over a 4-month period. Information and material gathered will form the basis for the creation of subsequent photographic, textual and audiovisual works.".
Recherchestipendien Bildende Kunst 2019 vergeben - Berlin.de
Recherchestipendien Bildende Kunst 2019 vergeben