The multi-chapter exhibition INDIGO WAVES AND OTHER STORIES: RE-NAVIGATING THE AFRASIAN SEA AND NOTIONS OF DIASPORA is an effort to unpack and shed light on a long and continual history of water-based exchanges that have generated cultural and social affinities between the African and Asian continents. It brings together works by artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers and thinkers. Combining new commissions with existing projects, the exhibition traces links between the Asian and African regions, manifesting overlays and diasporic transfers between two areas of increased global political, economic and cultural importance in the 21st century. The space also called Indian Ocean emerges as a communal horizon that reveals shades of cultural, linguistic, political and historical passage from ancient times to the present.
Both exhibition parts, showing concurrently at the Gropius Bau → and SAVVY Contemporary → in Berlin, have been composed in resonance. While moving between these venues, visitors can experience fluid associations that open up like the tug and swell of tides. The exhibition follows the first chapter at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, revealing a journey of material, textual and aural histories and connecting them via this ocean to the city of Berlin.
