Guest Room:
KJ Abudu

Der Greif invited curator, writer, and critic KJ Abudu to curate a Guest Room. Based between New York, London, and Lagos, his writings and exhibitions focus on critical art and discursive practices responding to the world-historical conditions produced by colonial capitalist modernity. For this edition of Guest Room, he has chosen the theme “Sounds of Resistance."

"I’m interested in practices that simultaneously approach the photographic medium and the global field of politics in a sonic register. In other words, how might civic antagonisms, silenced histories, anti-imperial solidarities, and dissident social ensembles be figured, visually and haptically, as atonal compositions, indeterminate frequencies, and insurgent speech-acts? I encourage submissions that ask what liberatory possibilities could be gleaned from considering the sounds of images alongside the sounds of politics."

This open call invited artists to think about the hidden connections between images and sounds, and how photography can tell stories of resistance, solidarity, and unheard voices. How can an image echo the struggles and aspirations of people and communities? What happens when we think of an image not just as something we see but as something we can feel or hear - carrying whispers of histories, protests, and untold truths?