Memory Biwa with Céline Barry and Gifty Amoateng

Memory Biwa’s work centers on the legacy of colonialism in Namibia, where the former German Empire committed a genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples. What can be built from the dust of this historical catastrophe? Biwa’s response is a garden at the former Courthouse Lehrter Straße, featuring a Nama reed house as a space for resilience and growth. Through her installation, she explores sites of memory and embodied forms of transmission—building worlds with words. In her space, Biwa, together with invited guests and visitors of the 13th Berlin Biennale, engages with themes such as shapeshifting monuments, Black geographies, and ecologies.

These gatherings take place as part of her Yvette Abrahams Reading Cycle, held in honor of Yvette Abrahams—a healer, organic farmer, and historian who lives in South Africa. Following Prossession Peda’Gogo—a procession as part of the 13th Berlin Biennale with Lusine Khurshudyan to memorial plaques about Armenia and Namibia on Tempelhofer Feld—the Reading Cycle is the third movement of a series of artistic works by Biwa.

The event is kindly supported by AfroPolitan Berlin. 

Céline Barry, *1979 in Berlin. Places of belonging: Berlin, Dakar, Boké. Affiliation: FG DeKolonial e.V. – association of antiracist, postcolonial, and decolonial thought and practice. Article: “Kreuzberg is a construction site. A grounded theory in pictures”, 2025.

Gifty Amoateng, *1989 in Hünfeld. Places of belonging: Berlin, Kumasi, Ghana. Affiliation: off:hybrid. 

Memory Biwa, *1979 in Windhoek, Namibia. Orte der Zugehörigkeit: Northern and Western Cape, Tansania. Verbundenheit: Pungwe Listening.