With the interdisciplinary exhibition project »We Return as Rain, and Even Stones Begin to Bloom«, M.Bassy e.V. continues its ongoing journey through Pan-African artistic and epistemic practices opening a resonant space for the Pan-African voices, visions, memories, and futures imagined by Black feminist artists from across the African continent and its diasporas — honouring their practices as acts of feminine* worldmaking, resistance, and collective becoming. The artistic practices of Adesuwa Aighewi (b. 1988, USA/Nigeria/Thailand), Adama Delphine Fawundu (b. 1971, USA/Equatorial Guinea/Sierra Leone) and Mónica de Miranda (b. 1976, Portugal/Angola) unfold as visual and conceptual interventions beyond the boundaries of colonial, patriarchal, capitalist, and Eurocentric systems of perception and power. Engaging with histories and present conditions of diaspora, intersectionality, and non-Western knowledge epistemes, their practices foreground theme as matriarchal lineages, embodied and ancestral knowledge, ecological care, and spiritual devotion as political tools and forms of resistance.

Through installative, video and text-based works, the transdisciplinary exhibition on display at M.Bassy opens spaces for narratives, knowledge, and rituals that are still–and increasingly so once again–marginalized in today's world. In an in-depth and acute dialogue, they articulate holistic and matriarchal understandings of our planet that are essential for imagining decolonial, solidary, and egalitarian futures—across the African continent, its diasporas, and Europe. The exhibition will be accompanied by a conjoined program consisting of an artist residency by Adesuwa Aighewi who will be present for an artist talk at the opening, and two BIPoC workshops #1 & 2, which will focus on the sharing of intersectional Pan-African thought and the need for related socially engaged, feminist and artistic activism. One is led by the feminist activist, writer, poet and advisor on women's rights Jessica Horn (b. 1979, UK/Lesotho/Kenia) and the other by the film director, curator and editor Pascale Obolo (b. 1967 Cameroon/France).

Adesuwa Aighewi

Adesuwa Aighewi (b. 1988 in Minnesota, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist and founder of Legacy.World, a design research initiative exploring craftsmanship, cultural heritage, and value creation through fashion, material culture, and storytelling. Drawing on field research across Africa and Asia, her practice brings together traditional craft techniques, contemporary design, and scientific research methodologies to investigate how cultural knowledge can generate new economic and creative opportunities. Working across textiles, silver, bronze, photography, and film, Aighewi examines the relationships between labor, identity, and luxury while documenting the human stories embedded within objects. Her current body of work, Legacy.World, explores fashion as a platform for cultural exchange, material innovation, and the preservation of living tradition.

Adama Delphine Fawundu

Adama Delphine Fawundu (b. 1971 in Brooklyn, NY, USA) is a first-generation visual artist with heritage from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. Fawundu is a co-author/editor of the critically acclaimed book »MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora«. This book features over 100 women photographers of African descent from around the globe. Fawundu was featured in the critically acclaimed Netflix documentary film »In Our Mother’s Garden« directed by Shantrelle P. Lewis. Her awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, Catchlight Fellowship, Rema Hort Mann Artist Grant, the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship a.o. She received her MFA from Columbia University. She has presented public installations at Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Federal Hall in New York City. Solo show exhibitions and performances include: Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, USA; Newark Museum of Art, USA; Art@Bainbridge, Princeton University, USA; the Penumbra Foundation, New York City, USA; The Miller Theater at Columbia University, New York City, USA; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, USA; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, USA; African American Museum in Philadelphia, USA; and Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts & Culture, Charlotte, USA; a.o. In 2026, Fawundu released her first monograph »Praise House« on Archive Books. Also, her artist book »In Search of the Spirit House« was published by Express Newark and Project for Empty Space. Biennials include the 36th São Paulo Biennal, Brazil; the 1st Malta Biennal; and the 12th Edition of the Bamako Encounters Photography Biennial, Mali. Her works can be found in the collections at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, USA; Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden-Marrakech, Marocco; Newark Museum of Art, USA; Utah Museum of Fine Art Salt Lake City, USA; Portland Museum of Art, USA; Princeton University Museum, USA; Bryn Mawr College, USA; The Brooklyn Historical Society, USA; The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, USA; The David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland; The Petrucci Family Foundation, Asbury, USA; a.o. private collections.

Mónica de Miranda

Mónica de Miranda (b. 1976 in Porto, Portugal) is a visual artist, filmmaker and researcher of Angolan descent, whose interdisciplinary, research-based practice critically engages with the intersections of politics, gender, memory, space and history. Her work spans drawing, installation, photography, film and sound, operating at the boundaries between documentary and fiction. She investigates strategies of resistance, geographies of affect, critical fabulation and ecologies of care. She is the founder and Artistic Director of Hangar (2014), an art and research center in Lisbon, Portugal. Hangar’s programs create spaces where artists, curators and researchers—particularly from the Global South—can co-create and build social and creative networks that benefit their communities. Her work has been presented in international exhibitions including the 13th edition of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London, UK; the 6th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India; the 16th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates; the 1st Malta Biennale; the 3rd Lagos Biennial, Nigeria; the 6th Lubumbashi Biennale, Congo; the 12th Berlin Biennale, Germany; the 12th Dakar Biennale, Senegal; the 5th Casablanca International Biennale, Marocco; Bamako Encounters – 13th African Biennial of Photography, Mali; the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, Italy; BIENALSUR 2021; Houston FotoFest, USA (2022); and the 18th edition of Fotografia Europea, Reggio Emilia, Italy. In 2024, Mónica represented the Portuguese Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale with the project »Greenhouse«. Her solo and group exhibitions have taken place at institutions including Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India; Somerset House Courtyard, London, UK; Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates; Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, USA; PhotoIreland, Dublin, Ireland; Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal; MUCEM, Marseille, France; Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium; MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal; MUAC, Mexico City, Mexico; Barbican, London, UK; Autograph, London, UK; Frac des Pays de la Loire, Nantes, France; Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden; MNAC, Lisbon, Portugal; and the Camões Cultural Institute, Luanda, Angola; a.o. She was awarded the Soros Arts Fellowship (2024) and the La Caixa Foundation Fellowship (2022) and received the Turin Photography Award (2024).

Pascale Obolo

Pascale Obolo (b. 1967 in Jaunde, Cameroon) is a film director, researcher, curator, activist and artist. In 2005 she released her debut film »Calypso at Dirty Jim's«, a tribute to calypso and Trinidad, which won numerous awards, in 2006 including the International Pan-African Film Festival of Cannes and African Diaspora Film Festival in New York. In 2008 she produced the short film »La Femme invisible«. Her first full-length film was a documentary about Calypso Rose in 2011. Obolo is editor-chief of the art magazine Afrikadaa and founder and director of the African Art Book Fair (AABF), an independent publishing fair that concentrates on practical editing skills and supports unique publications of a high quality in South(s) territories. She is also a member of the Academic Council of the art school on Réunion Island. As an activist, her work throws the archives and memories into question and is dedicated to the themes of identity, exile, trauma, invisibility and racism. Her research focuses on the different practices of transmission of knowledge and decolonial pedagogies in art and activist circles.Her work scrutinises archives through the construction of historical narratives from a postcolonial perspective, through visual and cultural representations of political and economic history, through photography, video and performance. Her current research focuses on museum acquisition policies in the era of globalization and the possibilities of decolonizing institutional practices.

Jessica Horn

Jessica Horn (b. 1979 in the UK) is a feminist activist, writer, poet, and an advisor on women's rights with Ugandan and Malian background. and grew up in Lesotho and Fiji. Her work focuses on women's rights, bodily autonomy and freedom from violence, and African feminist movement building. She is also a leader in philanthropy. Jessica Horn was named as an African woman changemaker by ARISE Magazine and as one of Applause Africa's "40 African Changemakers under 40". She served as the director of programs at the African Women's Development Fund from 2015 - 2020 and was appointed Regional Director for the Ford Foundation's East Africa office in 2021, serving until 2025. Horn has served as an advisor to philanthropic and women's rights initiatives, including Mama Cash, Urgent Action Fund-Africa, Comic Relief, the Kings College Conflict, Security & Development Group Knowledge Building and Mentoring Program, and the journal Development. She is a founder member of the African Feminist Forum Working Group. Her analysis of the practice of African feminist movements from independence to the present is explored in her book »African Feminist Praxis: Cartographies of Liberatory Worldmaking« (Sage, 2025). As an activist poet, Horn has used poetry as a medium to discuss human rights abuses and explore the concept of revolutionary love. Horn 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). Currently, she is Senior Research Fellow at Moleskine Foundation in Milan.

Opening: 19.09.2026, 7 PM, with Adesuwa Aighewi

Please reserve via: reservation@m-bassy.org
 
M.Bassy e.V., Schlüterstraße 80, 20146 Hamburg
Run time: 20.09. – 13.11.2026, Opening hours: Thu - Sun, 2 - 6 PM
 
Accompanying Program: BIPoC-Workshop #1 & 2 with Jessica Horn und Pascale Obolo (dates and detailed info to be announced soon!)

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.