Po B.K. Lomami, aksanti 33, 2023. Performance still. Courtesy of the artist.
In June 2021, Pfizer announced the permanent discontinuation of Valtran, predicting that the Belgian market’s stock would be exhausted after December of that year. The last bottles expire in 2023.
Warning: At the time of writing, neither the artist nor the writer has lived aksanti 33 (part 2). The artist offers readers a first attempt at archiving an intervention-performance. The writer also wishes to put forward a certain intimacy with the artist, and the time between their encounter, the intervention-performance, the publication of said text, and the offering of the “art object” to the readers. This text mentions the consumption of drugs.
I was reading the vision of Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, who describes self-care as an internal process of self-reflection that necessitates making difficult decisions that match our values, and putting these decisions into practice by changing our relationships, our points of view, our work space, and eventually the broken systems we live in (without crystals or bubble baths!). I describe my curatorial practice as being rooted in care, but I have to ask myself whether I’m profiting from this idea by applying it to my professional life. By this, I mean the practice of bringing care to the statements and ideas of the artists and curators I collaborate with, and of trusting the capabilities of the technicians who install my exhibitions, as well as extending physical care to the people I work with. Often, during the installation of my curated shows, you’ll hear “Have you eaten?”—a question I’ve inherited from my Haitian mother for whom the language of love translates into feeding her community. Even if these acts of care can seem remarkable in the extractive and exploitative milieu of the art world, whom am I really taking care of? Do I run any risk by providing this care?
For Po B. K. Lomami, who is Belgo-Congolese, care and self-care are much more than an internal process of self-reflection. Living with physical disabilities affecting parts of their back and their left arm and shoulder due to a medical error at birth, their everyday life requires constant self-care. Their arm is dislocated, which prevents them from performing certain movements, like lifting it over their head. They live with continuous pain, which is relieved through a lot of physiotherapy and by spending time in a prone position. Their home office includes an elliptical trainer, an abduction cushion, weights to help exercise certain movements, and a daybed. For the past 12 years, they have also been caring for themself by using a strong muscle relaxant, Valtran.
Po B.K. Lomami, aksanti 33, 2023. Performance still. Courtesy of the artist.
I take Valtran (in drops) as a muscle relaxant […] to manage the pain without developing an addiction or a dependence. My mother found out about the existence of this medication via people she cared for who benefitted from it: older people, people with physical disabilities, and people living with chronic pain. She asked my doctor if it could be prescribed for me and that’s how my life changed.¹
“WOW! So your mother’s love language translated into [the act of] making you take drugs!”
Laughter
“What’s more, for her, probably same as for your mother, everything is a drug; [for her there’s no difference between] cigarettes and crack!”
Laughter
The medication had the effect of relaxing my body, reducing the pain [and] making me more emotionally available. Managing the pain also had an impact on my mental health, because the intense chronic pain was throwing me into depressive cycles.²
aksanti 33 (part 2) is a performative intervention/participatory performance that took place at the FOFA Gallery, and involved sharing a risk with the artist: that of helping them to finish their supply of Valtran before it expires. The piece is also a way for Po to mourn their aunt in Congo, with whom they shared their medication, which allowed her to become autonomous. Even though they never met her, this sharing constituted care, a shared familial moment, a lineage. “It’s medication as a technology for intimacy, for kinship,” they tell me. Today I ask myself what will remain of this intervention, of this crip ritual lived initially over distance. What are the implications for FOFA in presenting this work? Institutions, especially those with sterile white walls (like hospitals and galleries) are rarely spaces of care for Black people, and always trigger PTSD for Po. This project’s archive will potentially hold a trace of violence for them. But archiving an intervention also implicates other people: how can an “art object” take care of Po? It will be left to us, the participants, to ensure that we try to liberate them from their trauma, to offer them care. And because we are taking a risk with them, their liberation must be achieved in the way of Nina Simone: with no fear.³
Translation: H Felix Chau Bradley
Email communication in preparation for the participatory performance aksanti 33, sent on February 25, 2023.
Ibid.
The singer Nina Simone and the author share the same first name: Eunice.
Po B. K. Lomami (Pauline Batamu Kasiwa Lomami) is an interdisciplinary and interventionist artist. They are Congodescendant (DRC) from Belgium currently based in Tiohtià:ke-Mooniyang-Montreal, Canada. Lomami cultivates intrusion, interference, and introspection as strategies for the reclamation of space-time, and as a response to emergencies. Exploring super-performance and failure, their practice revolves around the displacement of labour.
Born in Montreal, eunice bélidor is a curator, author, and researcher. She is an affiliate adjunct professor with the Department of Art History at Concordia University. Her current practice concentrates on inquiry as a curatorial method, and on epistolary writing as a generator of curatorial autotheory, and its intersection with care, feminism, and racial issues. She has organized many exhibitions in Canada and Europe, and her writing has been published in Esse, Canadian Art, Hyperallergic, the Journal of Curatorial Studies, Invitation, InCirculation, and ESPACE. eunice bélidor is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation - TD Bank Group Award for Emerging Curator of Contemporary Canadian Art (2018). She has worked at articule, Concordia University’s FOFA Gallery, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal.