Un-silencing bodies, un-silencing lives: artistic (self-) decoloniality and artistic (self-)empowerment

Taking into consideration the need to continue to move past post-colonial theories – while acknowledging their significance and contribution – and based foremost on decolonial discourses and actions regarding the production and the readings of contemporary art, this text points out the significance and importance of addressing politically charged topics and subjects through an artist’s own personal lens and individual history, thus contributing to breaking silences, to de-constru(ct)ing prejudiced and stigmatized ideas and images, and to eliminating traditionalist stereotypes. On a par with the generated collective momentum for change, the significance and importance of individual voices, perspectives, and experiences are also a crucial part of the anti-racism movement as they are a marker for the relevance of the individual and therefore a tool for the abolishment of stereotypes, which may be attained, as artist Lola Keyezua puts it, “by existing first as an individual and by placing as a priority the empowerment of who I am, before I exist to accept what people want me to be as a black woman in our society.” Keyezua’s silenced bodies establish manifold dynamics with collective notions of cultural identities and cultural memories, interacting simultaneously with past legacies, present realities, and future (aimed at) changes.