BLACK LAND Festival to Honour Egyptian Goddess in Berlin

Artistic Director Elena Sinanina said representations of Sakhmet and other holdings in European museums are a focal point of the festival's programme.

The festival BLACK LAND: RED LAND — Restitute will draw on the holdings of Egyptian Museums in Berlin and Turin in a programme of music, art, talks, and more. The festival will take place across Berlin from 21 to 28 December.

The theme of restitution and Sakhmet, the Egyptian Goddess of the hot desert sun, are focal points of the festival, which will play out at Berlin's silent green, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Palais am Festungsgraben, and in public spaces.

Participating artists and performers include Yara Mekawei, Hani Mojtahedy, Cevdet Erek, Attila Csihar, Lea Draeger, and Houaïda.

All the works in the programme 'deal with histories'—in some cases ancient Egyptian—and their 'mediation into the present', explained BLACK LAND's artistic director and curator, Elena Sinanina.

How did the Black Land festival come into being?

It emerged from the artistic project 'BLACK LAND' in 2022, which dealt with 'ancient' Egyptian artefacts or heritages in European museum collections, their meanings and provenances.

In the context of our research and discussions, but also in our encounter with the institution of the museum, many questions arose that we wanted to pursue further both artistically and discursively. This necessarily leads to the question of the postcolonial grounds of our work and the corresponding limitations. We are looking for ways out of these.

This year's festival is intended to discuss the themes of the project both artistically and discursively on the basis of the main theme of restitution. It seems to me that we need a joint exchange on the complexities of the topic today more than ever.

Where does the name BLACK LAND come from?

'Black Land' is the word for word English translation of 'Kemet', which was the ancient Egyptian name for the country, at least according to the assumption, the black, fertile land. The so-called ancient Egyptian artifacts are located in this land, you have to understand this context if you want to understand its elements. What was this land five thousand years ago?

'Red Land' refers to 'Descheret', the ancient Egyptian term for the desert. As Sakhmet is a focal point of this year's project and her/ their mythological place of origin is/supposed to be the desert, it made sense to include this in the title.

What can you tell us about the art commissioned for the programme?

The artistic contributions to the festival all deal with histories, in some cases with 'ancient' Egyptian narratives and their mediation into the present. For me and for us as a team, it is interesting when artists go their own experimental ways and also take a political stance. All of the participating artists pursue experimental or conceptual approaches and focus their work on sound or sound art.

Why did you want to make Sakhmet a focal point of the festival?

A year ago, a research into the statues of the ancient Egyptian goddess Sakhmet took me to the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy. Since their export from Egypt in the 19th century, statues of Sakhmet have been scattered across various museums worldwide. Outside of Egypt, they seem strange and peculiar because they lack the context for which they were built. They seem isolated and self-referential.

In dealing with the Turin Sakhmets, I understood that their phenomenon can be explored in an artistic encounter, a joint dialogue between Sakhmet, the museum and us as a festival team and the participating artists.

Since August 2023, there has been a sister statue of one of the Sakhmets in Turin in Berlin, Sakhmet ('who does good and enlivens the Two Lands'). The statue was produced from 3D models of the same statue from Turin, which the museum made available to us as public domain for the project. Sakhmet is part of various artistic performances and activations and, after the conclusion of our festival, she is supposed to go on an international tour together with artists and scientists to visit her sisters in international museums. —[O]