State of Emergency: Ecologies of Resistance

A talk with curator Michelle Mlati

Friday 20/03 6pm

At The Recovery Plan

Vua Santa Reparata 19red

State of Emergency is born out of a 10-year photography collaboration between Max Pinckers and the Mau Mau war veterans in Kenya from Murang’a from 2014 to 2024. During the 1952 emergency declared by the colonial British government that lasted 8 years, the Mau Mau actively resisted and their struggle for independence persisted in the forests of

Kenya that at once became their host and companion. Experimenting with reenactment, speculative documentary, photography, book art, textiles, sound, installation and participation the project continued by Michelle Mlati aims to establish a discussion with Max Pinckers’ and the MMWVA’s work with the practices of Kenyan artists and architects such as James Muriuki, Cave Bureau, KMRU and Wambui Kamiru. It presents stories of communities often on the peripheries of these struggles within and outside independent movements. State of Emergency EoR connects and thinks about land and the body in the construction of self-determination and self-definition relative to collective narratives and archives. What visions emerge between historical and present injustices from ecological and political emergencies declared and undeclared? What human and more-than-human networks in their surroundings have supported them to thrive in the resistance against colonial domination?