Greer Valley’s curatorial practice of care

The black writing on the floor reads “unsettled”. As one steps over it, the names of four participating artists are seen written on the wall to the right: Bronwyn Katz, Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, Nolan Oswald Dennis and Zayaan Khan. A few paces further the writing states “Curated by Greer Valley”.

The exhibition, which forms part of the 14th Dak’Art Biennale, centres core considerations of Greer’s curatorial practice: exploring land as sustenance, as a register of embedded colonial violence and as a sonic archive. Held at the Ifan Museum in Senegal’s capital, the biennale teems with art lovers moving between the two floors to see the work of the guest curators, who include Valley, Syham Weigant from Morocco and Nana Oforiatta Ayim from Ghana.

Arriving at the museum on its open day, I had just missed Mushaandja’s Zilin: for the first and future sonic stars, a ritual performance highlighting the notion of a borderless Africa. Inside the museum, the rest of unsettled unfurls quietly on the top floor. Holding the room together is an installation by Khan called commensality through deep time. It features a low, long table laid with salts, sand, ash, seeds and clay pots, some made from clay collected in District Six, a Cape Town site of forced removals during apartheid.

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