Freddy Houndekindo, konstnär och student vid programmet i fri konst, är aktuell med Becoming Tree, en performance som utvecklas månadsvis under utställningsperioden för When We See Us på Liljevalchs i Stockholm.
Utställningen When We See Us visar till och med den 30 augusti nästa år 148 målningar av 115 konstnärer, inlånade från 16 olika länder, och beskrivs av Liljevalchs som ”den största utställningen någonsin som har svart självrepresentation som sin utgångspunkt”.
Houndekindos performance, som sker i samarbete med konstnärsplattformen Southnord, formas av rörelse och hämtar kraft ur en praktik som kretsar kring ämnen som ”identitet, svarthet och maskulinitet”.
Det första performancetillfället sker den 8 november, kl. 14.00–14.45 och 15.30–16.15, men fler tillfällen tillkommer allteftersom.
För uppdateringar kring programmet, se här.
Becoming Tree
”Becoming Tree is an immersive, durational performance that reimagines how time, space, and embodiment unfold within the museum. Appearing cyclically throughout the exhibition, the performer becomes a living presence among the artworks—engaging in dialogue with them and with the audience to weave connections between body, image, and spirit.
Through movement, rhythm, and a polyphony of languages—French, English, Fongbe, and abstract sound—the work explores how linguistic belonging and dissonance mirror cultural interconnection. Drawing from Africa’s oral storytelling traditions, it transforms the spoken and the gestured into vessels for layered histories and speculative futures.
Rooted in the symbolism of the tree—sacred in both African and Scandinavian traditions—the performance embodies cycles of growth and renewal, proposing interdependence between the human and the nonhuman. Each iteration accumulates traces of memory and relation, allowing the space itself to evolve over time.
In dialogue with When We See Us, Becoming Tree extends the exhibition’s exploration of Black figuration from paint to performance—rendering representation as a living, breathing act. Both projects center the Black body as a site of agency and transformation, embrace multiplicity in language and form, and move fluidly between ancestral memory and speculative time.
Together, they create a continuum—a space where seeing becomes sensing, and where figuration unfolds not only on the canvas but through presence, rhythm, and relation.”