writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

the way ancient Egypt's Nefertiti (symbolized by a bust detained in a German Museum) is being used
in contemporary public discourses about women, migration and diaspora. "I step on air" tells the
story of Ghanean‐German author‐performer May Ayim who was internationally known for her
poems, academic work and activism in the women's movement in the 1980s/90s. Oxana's choice to
embody strong PoC women characters ‐ a dancer, a pharaoh, a poet ‐ reflects a "dual performativity"
which operates both on stage and at "meta‐theatrical" level, when "an aesthetic use of performativity
in a performance site implies awareness and agency". 26 Here agency is the performer's power to
actually enact the figure she is dancing and awareness is awakened by acknowledging persons and
achievements which are rarely or not at all otherwise reminded by institutional memory structures.
In order to tune the audience to the dance which will be shown, Oxana systematically schedules a
talk before performing, either in the form of an interview by an academic/journalist/artist or by
holding an introductory speech by herself which is related to the topics addressed in the piece ‐ for
instance, asking people, herself included, to pay attention to how we may (un)consciously reproduce
the hierarchic system which we are socialized in. Oxana's approach particularly stands out of current
trends, for it privileges a pre‐performance contextualisation over a post‐performance explanation,
thus giving the audience tools to freely interpret her art according to one’s own biographies and
experiences.
Laid bare by our unveiling, our inner‐most life stories become objects for public gaze;
our resistance is known. We engage in naming our subjectivity, telling our story. 27
Every artist inevitably draws on personal experiences to create art. Oxana's goal seems to be more
complex than telling "her" story, moving further she inscribes and incorporates other people's stories
into the public sphere, which echoe with her own. Thus, she constantly slides between an
"autobiographical impulse" 28 and pulsating biographies. Oxana reveals the multilayered proximity she
feels with her protagonists:
(...) I have worked strongly biographically in the last pieces, actually worked on figures
such as Tatjana Barbakoff, Neferet iti and May Ayim. These are figures with whom I am
familiar to some extent. Each one has, in a very distinct fashion, a lot to do with me. Not
only in terms of biography, but also as soulmates. Therefore it is good that I dance as a solo
artist, for these pieces are very important and this is how I wish to show them. 29
The context plays an important role: Oxana, when perceived as an Afro‐German artist, is often
denied legitimacy to participate in German Holocaust memory. In reality however, her will to create
Through Gardens originated in identifying with Tatjana Barbakoff's dance and personality which she
discovered in an exhibition catalogue. Bringing back on stage a figure marginalized in dance
historiography, she proceeds to what José Esteban Muñoz calls a "disidentification" which "recircuits
[exclusionary machinations] to account for, include, and empower minority identities and
identifications." 30 Muñoz develops a very accurate perception of the transformative power of
performance. Oxana achieves it through the dance as well as in the speech preceding it, through the
context in which the piece is embedded ‐ for instance when Oxana curates her own multidisciplinary
"Salon Qi" in the memory of Tatjana Barbakoff and in Oxana's own writings about her work:
(...) I noticed, what I had already realized earlier, that in the dance historiography too,
only certain persons are being remembered, but persons with whom I cannot identify.
Working on "Through Gardens" was the first time that I could identify with a [dance
historical] figure, namely Tatjana Barbakoff. And Tatjana Barbakoff brought me to always
further question who actually in Germany, in Europe, in the world writes or is allowed to
write "history". And so it became clear that it is very important for contemporary artists
like me, to write "history" ourselves. 31
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