Documentation of the performance B: I, Too, 2016

Donna Kukama
1981, Mafikeng, South Africa. Lives in Johannesburg, South Africa

Donna Kukama uses performance as a means of resistance to the established artistic practices and, through it, seeks to deconstruct methods and invent procedures. Along with performance, she develops writings, videos and sound installations that use the public sphere in order to insert into the field of art voices that are foreign to this realm. Her questioning often addresses current events through the construction of narratives and the manner in which they play out socially. It is in this sort of context that Kukama introduces her body to create imagens of counter-enactments that disavow hegemonic reports. At the 32nd Bienal, the artist presents three chapters that comprise an extensive process in the creation of a book. The concept of book, however, does not refer to the object we know, but unfolds into performance, drawing, sculpture, video, text and oral history. This work then takes the form of a series of public announcements accompanied by projections produced in a direct relationship with the political contexts of each of the places she has been. The chapters that Kukama presents in Brazil are: C: The Genealogy of Pain, A: The Anatomy of History and B: I, Too, which will take place in different spaces and on different days.