Most of us are looking for the way out. Another sunrise. The next wave. The new moon. But how do we map movement in a moment where collective ethical anchors are unmoored? How do we uphold life in a torrent of decisions and institutional practices negating its possibility? And as we imagine otherwise, how do we map future horizons from the shores of an earth set to be African in its majority demographic, yet still untuned to the deeper waters of Africa’s vast histories, knowledges and dreamscapes? This workshop explores these questions from the vantage point of African feminisms. Drawing on her book African Feminist Praxis: Cartographies of Liberatory Worldmaking, Jessica Horn will engage participants in a series of experiments mapping alternative worlds using the cardinal principles of African feminist praxis - kinship, courage, pleasure, care and memory - as navigation tools.
My feminist utopia begins in our bodies, as our first and last home, as the only thing that is ever really ours-as the space that life is made real. My utopia is a world where we all live free, healthy, pleasurable, agented lives in our own bodies. It requires political, economic, social and cultural systems that enable embodied freedom for all. Oh and there must be art too. Lots of it.
Jessica Horn
Jessica Horn (b. 1979) is a (East) African feminist ideamonger, award winning poet and founder/director of Hindura Studios, a Nairobi, Kenya based social design agency grounded in futures and feminist thinking. She grew up in Lesotho and Fiji and has lived in 9 countries including Sierra Leone, Ghana and Kenya - migratory experiences that have shaped her transnational vantage point. With a background in women’s health rights, Jessica’s work is rooted in body politics and questions of collective transformation from an embodied feminist perspective. Her book »African Feminist Praxis: Cartographies of Liberatory Worldmaking« (Sage, 2025) documents decades of feminist mobilisation on the continent. Taking her archival passion into film, Jessica recently directed »The Temple of Her Skin«, a feature documentary exploring African women’s journeys with tattooing and scarification. She is also the host of »The Beautiful Policy Podcast« where she interviews practitioners who have turned radical dreams into tangible frameworks. A leader in philanthropy, she has served as the director of programs at the African Women's Development Fund and in 2021 was appointed Regional Director for the Ford Foundation's East Africa office, the first African woman in this role. She has also served on the boards of Mama Cash, Urgent Action Fund-Africa, and the Fund for Global Human Rights, and is a founder member of the African Feminist Forum Working Group. As an activist poet, Jessica has used poetry as a medium to discuss human rights abuses and explore the concept of revolutionary love. She won the IRN FannyAnn Eddy Poetry Award in 2009 for her poem »They have killed Sizakele« and the Sojourner Poetry Prize judged by June Jordan in 2001 for her poem »Dis U.N: For Rwanda«. She is also the author of a collection, »Speaking in Tongues« (Mouthmark, 2006). Jessica was named as one of Applause Africa's "40 African Changemakers under 40".
@africanfeministpraxis
sagepub.com/buy-a-book/african-feminist-praxis
BIPoC-Workshop #2: 16.10.2026, 7 PM - »Our Praxis Is the Map: African Feminisms as Compass« with Jessica Horn
Venue: M.Bassy e.V., Schlüterstraße 80, 20146 Hamburg
Participation free of charge (incl. drinks & snacks)
Please reserve via: : reservation@m-bassy.org
The workshop is part of the accompanying program of the exhibition »We Return as Rain, and Even Stones Begin to Bloom« with Adesuwa Aighewi, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Mónica de Miranda & Alberta Whittle.
We would like to thank the BKM - Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media, and the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS for their funding and support of the project.
