Papaya, 2023 Artivism/Theater/Performance (Lux, BE, UK)
PAPAYA is an afro-feminist project which, among various outcomes, addresses the mental health of people affected by racism and sistemic patriarchy today. The project was launched in 2019 by the artist Jennifer Lopes Santos. Finally, Eric G. Foy for the music and Melissandre Varin for the concept, creation and interpretation were added.
The Afro-feminist performance PAPAYA, premiered at Kulturfabrik, mixes the mediums of dance, text, sound, installation, textile and performative arts. Beyond physical, disciplinary and ideological borders, artists Jennifer Lopes Santos, Eric G. Foy, and Melissandre Varin invite us to think through the body by questioning imagined or real plural identities. By taking the steep paths of their relationships with tenderness, alienation, and intimacy, they offer an immersion in the troubled Afro-diasporic waters. Via their personal experiences, the members of the eponymous collective unearth and weave a sensitive performance in order to transmit without filters the trauma of erasure, of all these masks worn to survive but also the countless processes of creative liberation and emancipation to it. How can we create, nourish, heal and share the conditions of (self) love beyond discrimination and power issues? We are invited to reconsider what art can trigger, repair, and transform.
About the project: The afro-feminist collective PAPAYA is based in Luxembourg, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. After a first residency and workshop “(Black) liberation?” in February 2022 at the Warwick Arts Center (UK); an artistic residency, a speaking circle for and by racialized people, a conference on mental health in art for queer and trans people followed by a first work in progress presentation on 3rd March at Trois C-L (Lux). PAPAYA settles down in Esch for a final residency before a premiere on 12th May, 2023 at the Kulturfabrik.
