Embryo

Taking their own experiences as their starting point, the spoken word performer Mira Hamdi foregrounds the struggles of women of colour in the LGBTQ community. Hamdi describes the day-to-day experiences of oppression as a person who encounters discrimination on various levels. What does it mean for one’s own existence to be permanently perceived as “different”? These vigorous, self-assertive poems are an act of empowerment and healing. Ultimately, we are all made from the same material, and the differences that apparently separate us are only societal constructions. The pliable clay with which Hamdi continually models new forms also stands for this collective materiality. Hamdi combines their powerful texts with a reduced but expressive language of movement as well as with images by the filmmaker Nao Maltese.

In 2017 Mira Hamdi won an artistic residency for their contribution to the Dream City Festival, which was part of the project “Tilt Frame” by the choreographer Boyzie Cekwana. In 2019 they performed the French-Tunisian collaboration KHANKA at this festival. In addition, they participated in the poetry slam evening as part of the event series “Tashweesh / تشويش”, organised by the Goethe Institute in Cairo in 2018 (and Brussels ...). EMBRYO is the first performance Mira Hamdi has developed themself.