The BPoC Art Avengers
/ Text: Rena Onat / Drawing: Krishan Rajapakshe
Documenta Fifteen / Kassel, 2022 / *foundationClass*collective
Decolonizing Alphabet
Decolonizing the Alphabet / Zine (15copies) / INDERNET – festival for Indian-inspired culture.
https://kunsthafen.com/programm/indernet-festival-for-indian-inspired-culture-2/
A for Appel – That was the 1st English lesson I have taken 30 years ago. But I have seen an Apple tree, after a long time in my life since I read A for appel lesson. That’s how British colonial teaching symbols are still existing in our lives. In the Post-Colonial era, the English language is one of the state languages in most South Asian countries. Now it’s part of the culture of South Asia. But it does not mean It was a colonial gift. It still keeps performing for the Classist societies. British has used the English language to divide our societies. Make us ashamed if we could not speak their language. That trace is still there. British has introduced a new English-speaking class, Which is a mechanism divided and ruled. The end goal was to keep us silent. Even today those dividends are visible. Now it generates advantages for Right-wing nationalists in the South Asian region. This is an attempt to take control of our narratives. Decolonizing the alphabet is shaking from the foundation Attempt.
Collective Show: Decolonizing Alphabet Poster / Capitalshit II / Berlin, 2019
http://kollektivtod-verlag.de/category/aktuelles/
DIE BALKONE 2 :
- Re-membering the Surfaces of the Specters, 2021
Cam-Anh Luong, Hatef Soltani, Dachil Sado, Ulf Aminde, Krishan Rajapakshe and D’Andrade let themselves be driven from the Käthe Kollwitz monument to the wild concentration camp at the Wasserturm, to the hut on Marienburger Straße where Steve still was alive a few weeks ago. In the resulting podcast, they talk about memory and resistance, questioning history, childhood and mothers of Prenzlauer Berg while touching the surfaces of the ghosts who resist gentrification.
The podcast can be accessed via the QR code. Please listen with headphones.
Artistic editing: D’Andrade
Design: Cam-Anh Luong and Krishan Rajapakshe
Can collaborative practice revolutionize the use of public spaces?
Cam-Anh Luong & Hatef Soltani & Dachil Sado & Ulf Aminde & Krishan Rajapakshe & D’Andrade: I thought about that question yesterday. Our whole audio work is the answer to it. But If all collaborators have the same access and similar resources, what kind of revolution would we talk about? And what do we think about engendered bodies? Yes nice question, how would it look like if the femmes* would Prenzlauer Berg take over?
I heard much of the time some of the gentrification practices are defined as innovation or revolutionary practices. But who will benefit in the end? Because access to public space is a class matter.
Collaboration does not pretend to be a revolution but leaves signs about significant lives. We cannot carry out a revolution in our hands, but we can invite you, to come to walk with me, let’s make the revolution by following in our footsteps.
Unsolve Justices: Cell 05 / Oury Jalloh Complex
Zine (15 limited Prints) / 2022, Berlin
On 7th January 2005, Oury Jalloh, a Sierra Leonean man in his early twenties, burned in Cell #5 at the Dessau Police Station. The circumstances of his death are deeply contested and have been the source of some of the most intense legal and political debates around policing, race and evidence in unified Germany.
Please attention: Trigger warnings
Killing us Softly
Mix media Installation / savvy-contemporary / 2020, Berlin
Killing us Softly is a work by Krishan Rajapakshe that consists of images and mannequins focusing on the plight of around 6,000 factory workers in Cambodia who protested in 2014 by using their one-hour break time to demand from Western brands, such as C&A and H&M, a 177€/month minimum wage.
Krishan.Rajapakshe 