»The Panafrican Library Will Not Be Colonized« is a moving curatorial Reading Room project, developed from the archives of the ten editions of the African Art Book Fair (AABF) and the Augmented Library project. This Reading Room is dedicated to Pan-African and diasporic editorial practices, brought into resonance with struggles and editorial experimentation. Conceived as a hybrid device, imagined as a living place—at once a reading space, a collective listening station, and a discussion platform—the Reading Room explores publishing as a political tool, a space of resistance, a technology for collective storytelling, and a gesture of self-archiving through orality, in the face of mechanisms of erasure or homogenization.This constellation enables analysis of the conditions of existence of books produced on the African continent—their circulation, the structural obstacles they encounter, and the critical strategies developed by publishers, artists, and collectives to make their voices heard. The project adopts a situated curatorial approach, attentive to the power dynamics that run through spaces of publication, dissemination, celebration, and legitimation. It questions the role of festivals and institutions in the production—or marginalization—of knowledge. Our approach is conscious of the power relations that shape the world of books.
 
»The Panafrican Library Will Not Be Colonized« upholds the idea of a decolonial ecology of publishing, in which printing of books, their circulation, linguistic diversity, the creation of new imaginaries, and their preservation become acts of emancipation. The archive is seen not as a neutral or fixed space, but as a field of political tension, an active site of resistance and collective transmission. Particular focus will be placed on the publication of »Afrikadaa: Politics of Sound«—how sounds repair bodies and stories. In the face of the concentration of big companies, independent publishing houses are endangered and precarious. The project asserts that publishing is a situated gesture, marked by issues of access, diversity, visibility, and memory. It proposes an alternative methodology of reading, listening, transmission, and archive-making—a way of making publishing a political territory of our own, a battleground for knowledge—a space of epistemic struggle, a place of rest and repair.
 
»The Panafrican Library Will Not Be Colonized« produces narratives, shapes collective memory, and can also contribute to the erasure of certain histories. The Reading Room highlights publishers, artists, and collectives who transform print into a space of poetic insurrection, resistance to imposed silences, and the construction of alternative archives.
 

Pascale Obolo

Pascale Obolo (b. 1967 in Jaunde, Cameroon) is an independent curator, filmmaker-researcher, and editor-in-chief of Afrikadaa. Her curatorial practice explores archives, memories, underrepresented narratives, and forms of knowledge transmission from a decolonial perspective. She conceives curation as a collective space for research, knowledge sharing, and experimentation, where knowledge circulates and is continually reimagined. Founder of the African Art Book Fair in Dakar and co-director of Miss Read in Berlin, she also co-initiates and co-directs Labo Bénin in Benin, a curatorial training program of La Grande-Place.

@obolopascale

BIPoC-Workshop #1: 10.10.2026, 6 PM - »The Panafrican Library Will Not Be Colonized // Part II« with Pascale Obolo

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.