ewemandeehiwe

A journey through a mesh of narratives.

As I step into the exhibition, I feel less like a visitor and more like a body entering a dialogue.
A dialogue with the architecture, the images, the other bodies present and with Freddy
Houndekindo, who is already listening to the space too. We move together through the
exhibition. The rooms speak loudly on their own, through colour, texture and layered
histories on the walls. There is no soundscape more than the sounds of what's happening in
the room. On the ground I notice photographs. They are not part of the exhibition. As I step
closer, I realise they belong to Freddy. Beside him lies a transparent bag, visibly filled. He
has brought something with him into the space. Memories, images, fragments. Nothing is
hidden. What he carries is meant to be seen.

The performance begins quietly. Freddy positions himself in a corner of the room, breathing,
gathering energy from what is already there. Movement emerges from listening rather than
interruption. His presence does not overpower the exhibition but gently massages it, through
words, rhythm, voice and stillness. We are not guided as spectators, but as bodies moving
through a living constellation of themes.

This is a journey through narratives, not a single story, but many.

so it begins.

In the Everyday room. Language is repeated until it becomes rhythmical. It has the qualities
of spoken word, bars, poetry, it feels like something I can recognize. Words like work, chore,
labour. Repetition turns speech into a bodily pulse. Freddy speaks of a man working in the
field, a woman in the garden, boys playing outside, girls playing inside. The images are
normative and not particularly free. I recognise inheritance in this.

Labour here is not abstract. It is embodied and relational. Gendered roles appear and they
coexist within a shared space. Freddy places himself inside a corner, he calls it his everyday
corner. It feels like something he could be a part of.

The performance is making my mind wander and I'm starting to see the experience through
the lens of a journey in a narrative mesh. I first encountered the term narrative mesh through
choreographer and historian Fabian Barba's lecture I attended. I understood the term as a
structure where multiple narratives coexist without hierarchy. Stories overlap, interrupt and
inform one another rather than resolving into a single linear storyline. Meaning is produced
through relation, proximity and repetition rather than clarity or closure.

The mesh shifts. We find ourselves in a hallway near the Spirituality room. A threshold
space. A pause between rooms. Spirituality enters the mix.

Freddy speaks of Mother earth, the soil we come from, transcendence of what moves
between two worlds and recalls a teacher once telling him, “Why do you look up? God is
everywhere.” This unsettles something in me. If God is everywhere, who defines where God
resides? And why is Jesus white? We enter the Spirituality room. The walls are dense with
images of belief, ritual, spirits. Religion appears here as something functional, a system that
organises values, order and life. But spirituality feels like something else. Something less
institutional. Something inherited? Something from the soil?

Freddy speaks about Christianity as something he inherited, not something he became. This
resonates. I did not choose white Jesus. He was simply there. I was never taught about my
own spirits and gods. If belief is inherited, does it continue to shape identity even when it is
no longer practised? Vodou practices belong to this lineage too. They are often distorted or
dismissed through a Western lens. But ancestral practices centre continuity. Honouring
ancestors, land, generations before and after us and .....

Freddy mentions a song, that is a prayer, he learned from his mother. A prayer she believes
in. So he believes in his mother. I found that tender, funny and precise.

To inherit belief systems while being raised within Christianity does not form a contradiction.
It to me forms a mesh. And within this inheritance, colonial histories echo. Who brought
Christianity into African lineages in the first place?

When we see us, we must also see the land beneath us and the spiritual inheritances we
carry.

The atmosphere shifts again. Freddy’s presence felt softer. We enter the room curated for
triumph. He speaks about not speaking his parents’ language, yet accessing it through song.
This resonates. Many people in the diaspora share this experience. Culture was transmitted
not through words but through rhythm, joy, movement, repetition, labour and gathering and
.....

Freddy speaks about wanting to be “blacker.” I scan the room. What does it mean to want to
be blacker in a space filled with Black art and white spectators?
A longing for rest rather than performance. For brilliance rather than representation. For
access to language, memory and connection that transcend between worlds. Is this what
triumph looks like? Not arrival, but permission. Not visibility, but ease. The question does not
resolve. It stays in the mesh.

The journey continues into the room of sensuality. My gaze sharpens. I begin to see what
Freddy is drawing attention to, or is he aurafarming? Bodies resting. Bodies touching. Bodies
existing without performing for an external gaze. Freddy’s voice, rhythm and physical stance
shift once again. He positions himself in front of two pictures depicting male bodies in
underwear, relaxed, unguarded. Freddy’s body enters into dialogue with the images. It feels
as if a third presence emerges between him and the pictures. A shared space of attention,
intimacy and vulnerability. The spoken word quality returns. Freddy begins to articulate a
question that seems to genuinely intrigue him: masculinity. More specifically, what is male
intimacy without the sexual? What can masculinity be beyond what is usually assumed?

what I'm seeing in us.

Through the experience of When We See Us I felt that it becomes less a question of
representation and more a question of relation. What happens when we see ourselves not
as an image to be consumed or through a narrative that is interrupted by other people than
us, but as a living, shifting mesh of stories, ancestry, bodies, memories and inheritances?

Freddy’s performance activates this mesh in real time. Masculinity, Black joy, spirituality,
sensuality and the everyday do not appear as separate themes but as interconnected forces
moving through the body and the space. Each room adds another layer. Within a narrative
mesh, multiple sides and stories coexist. Connections cross borders and the power of
narrating a narrative becomes visible. I do not see a single image of “us”. I see community.
Many. I see family. I see a release from inherited roles and an openness to exploration,
existing alongside one another rather than against. I see long processes of preparation, care
and labour that precede celebration. Cooking, working, organising, gathering. Life as
continuous movement rather than isolated events. Bodies as systems rooted in the earth,
carrying soil, rhythm and memory forward. Is this Blacker?

When I see us, I also sense those I do not personally know. Elders. Ancestors. Cousins.
Grandparents. Presence and time are layered into the room. History moves with us, it's not
behind us. Through the photographs, the transparency and the recognition, these narratives
are allowed to circulate, overlap, interrupt and inform one another. Perhaps in this way it is
possible to find meaning(s).
Within this mesh, challenges exist, but they feel internal rather than imposed. The world
order shifts. Values shift. Priorities shift. When I see us, I cannot help but want to shake my
bum bum. I don't know why I just act on impulse and it feels nice. It feels like something I've
seen us do before. I think of being with my family, dancing, laughing and existing together
without performance. That memory settles next to the images on the walls and becomes part
of the exhibition for me. A part of the performance.

The experience evoked joy and power I carry with me. Streets. Images, recognition,
relations, music leaking from corners. Land. Voices calling. Heat. Overwhelming, but
beautiful. A dense landscape that I move through rather than observe from a distance.

When we see us, we are in motion.