Nhaka: Art Making, the Animist Body, and Radical Black African Presences

Valeska Geert Guestprofessor nora chipaumire
in conversation with Lucia Ruprecht.

In this opening event of nora chipaumire’s Valeska Gert Guestprofessorship, the renowned dancer and choreographer chipaumire critically addresses dance in the university context and explores her deepest intention to initiate and invigorate self-examination, reflection, shift, advance, movement, transformation through a physical manifesto.

She presents her work on Nhaka (inheritance, legacy - in Shona language) – an animist decolonial practice and theory that she been cultivating. Owing its genealogy to Shona culture and Shona spiritual practices, Nhaka is a practice of decoding and recoding strategies on how to discipline and build the physical body, in hopes of developing an organism that can reflect and produce gestures that expand our understanding of the human and the relationship of the human organism with the natural and spiritual world.

In the following conversation with Lucia Ruprecht, chipaumire explores how the practice of Nhaka informs her decades of work participating in many university-led initiatives – often as the only person of color (or African) or artist of color who can speak from first-hand experience of being the other. With her conversants, chipaumire considers an era when study, knowledge, and the role of the university as a place to gather are being questioned and queried. How does the artist enhance the interrogations and make way for other unexplored mindsets and thoughts? The conversation questions the artist as guest in these fundamental institutions, exploring what is expected from them and what should their role be.