Come Dipanare Una Matassa? Unravelling A Colonial Blueprint

Abstract

The central question of this research paper concerns how to unravel a ‘colonial blueprint’ on a personal and structural level. It considers what is translated, confronted, and affected viscerally. “Come dipanare una matassa” expresses the complexity of this process: it can be translated as “how to unravel a skein of wool”, and also as “how to come to terms with a knotted or difficult situation”. ‘Matassa’ refers to a skein or gut and intestines. Working with wool as both material and concept in my praxis, this paper starts with formative childhood experiences of moving between Italy and South Africa, alongside tracing my arts education in these contexts. Through this, I identify a personal history of affective dissonance and gut illness that prompted an unravelling of the socio-geo-political histories and epistemologies -or the “colonial matrix of power”- which formed me as a white, South African and Italian woman and artist. In my writing, I attempt to examine the slow journey of unravelling my ‘knowing’ and the normative epistemology of whiteness I was born into; my ‘being’ and the disembodied object I believed myself to be; and my ‘doing’, in search of a decolonial aesthesis. Autobiography has been my method of exposure and analysis in addressing colonial nodes in my histories. Sitting with what arises - intuitions, performances, new lexicons, labour-intensive works- has been my way of working with discomfort and understanding its gut politics. This paper addresses the exhibition that emerged as part of the research, entitled Things I Found Nelle Viscere.