Un_Masking Difference

For the second time in history, masks have become the symbol of a global pandemic. The facial front lines differ in shape and size and are fashioned to the users’ desires, reaching from African prints to floral patterns. But are masks solely ‘germ-shields’ or ‘dirt-traps’ as referred to a century ago? What does the choice of fabric actually reveal about its wearer? And in which way are differences ‘un_masked’?

Authors, academics and activists from different backgrounds share their ideas on the historical, political, religious, racial and cultural, as well as on the intersectional dimension of masks. Similar to W.E.B. Du Bois metaphor of ‘the veil’, which solely exists in people’s minds, masks can be seen as the physical manifestation of the inner and outer world, the speakable and the unspoken.

With texts by Logan February, Precious Colette Kemigisha, Olumide Popoola, Djamila Ribeiro, Jeferson Tenório und Sheree Renée Thomas.

A publication of the Literary Colloquium Berlin with the kind support of the Federal Foreign Office.

Natasha A. Kelly has a PhD in Communication Studies and Sociology with a research focus on Black German Studies. Her award-winning and internationally acclaimed documentary "Millis Awakening" was commissioned by the 10th Berlin Biennale in 2018. Based on her book "Sisters & Souls" (2015) she has been directing the sequential theater performance "M(a)y Sister" since 2016. Her dissertation "Afroculture. The Space between Yesterday and Tomorrow" (2016) was staged in three countries and three languages in 2019/20. Her latest publication "The Comet – Afrofuturism 2.0" (2020) is a documentary of the Black speculative arts symposium which she curated at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater in Berlin. http://www.natashaakelly.com