If I Gather Here and Shout Het raam gaat open als een sinaasappel

If I Gather Here and Shout Het raam gaat open als een sinaasappelFunto Omojola If I Gather Here and Shout summons Yoruba divinatory rituals into a hospital room. Incantatory verses accumulate alongside personal and historical figures of illness and death to illuminate the tensions between legibility and meaning making that emerge when an ill Black body is processed through a Western medical context. With intimate knowledge of how ancestral memory aches and sings in the body, Funto Omojola invokes a lamenting chorus

Intimate and speculative

het slavernijverleden

and how an identity is constructed

Sho is a genius work of literary precision

all in the firm hold of song

Get the shovel

the Hindu God of Love

as well as redefine belonging and migration in a misogynistic and racist world

Aridjis reflects on the past and ponders the future

In her long-awaited follow-up to Mercury

thanks to the support of the Icatu Prize for Arts

social welfare and official documentation a year before her birth