The book launch of SPAZIO GRIOT Artist Residency. On the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists #1, published by SPAZIO GRIOT and produced with the support of MUCIV-Museum of Civilizations in Rome, is conceived as a moment of collective reflection on a historical and cultural node of extraordinary importance for Italy: the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists, held in Rome in 1959, and its legacies and echoes in the present.

Edited by Johanne Affricot and Eric Otieno Sumba, the first issue includes contributions by Andrea Viliani, director of MUCIV (2022-2026); curator and researcher Chris Cyrille-Isaac; the inaugural cohort of resident artists (2024) –Brianda Carreras, Immaculate Ruému, and Damiano Tata – and an archival text by Alioune Diop, founder of the panafrican journal and publishing house Présence Africaine. The event introduces the editorial, curatorial and research dimensions of the project developed by SPAZIO GRIOT, which has taken the Congress as the thematic axis for a five-year artist residency programme (2024–2028), ahead of its 70th Anniversary in 2029. The conversation critically examines its premises, tensions, and omissions, while exploring movements and constellations of practices linked to Pan-Africanism, Black Internationalism, and Négritude.

During the event, discussion will focus on the historical significance of the Congress—a key moment of encounter and exchange between intellectuals, artists, and political figures from Caribbean, African and African American diasporas—and its centrality in the process of asserting Black cultural autonomy in dialogue and in tension with Western institutions, including the Istituto Italiano per l’Africa. At the same time, it will offer a critical space to reflect on its contradictions and on the still urgent need to rethink narratives and archives from a more situated and plural critical perspective.

The event will also provide an opportunity to explore the processes that have shaped the residency: from workshops and shared study sessions to exchanges with artists, curators, and institutions, highlighting how independent practices can generate new spaces for knowledge production and political imagination, and build languages capable of filling the gaps of historical memory and making underrepresented subjectivities visible. In this sense, the publication is not only a document, but a critical apparatus that activates new possibilities for reading both the past and the present.

Speakers:
Johanne Affricot, co-editor, SPAZIO GRIOT
Brianda Carreras, resident artist
Lorenzo Declich, IsIAO/IsMEO Library Immaculate Ruému, resident artist
Damiano Tata, resident artist

Moderator:
Matteo Lucchetti, Curator of Contemporary Arts and Cultures at MUCIV–Museum of Civilizations

Free event. Reservation recommended