For more than two decades now, the Berlin-based and Senegalese artist Mansour Ciss Kanakassy has been developing an artistic and intellectual concept titled Laboratoire de Déberlinisation [Deberlinization Laboratory], to question and transcend the mental boundaries imposed on the African continent and its peoples during the 18841885 Berlin conference. With an accent put on the need to rethink identity, migration, and cultural diversity, the Deberlinization Laboratory has continuously advocated and facilitated cultural dialogues and exchanges between several communities across the globe.
As a response to the curatorial statement of this year’s edition of the Bienal de São Paulo, Mansour Ciss Kanakassy proposes a multiformat piece titled Gondwana la fabrique du futur [Gondwana, the Factory of the Future] (2025). The project is named after the supercontinent Gondwana – sometimes referred to as Gondwanaland. Taking cues from the philosophical concept Quilombismo, developed by Abdias Nascimento, Gondwana la fabrique du futur is conceived as an independent and emancipatory site of discourse and resistance that strengthens the links between the African continent and its diasporas, while fundamentally addressing their social conditions.
Envisioned as a spatial intervention, the installation consists of large canvases produced using mixed-media techniques and drawings portraying several cartographies, and a banking infrastructure, the Quilombo Bank, which reminds us of the artist’s long-term practice that consists of setting up monetary branches in several geographies where one finds the Deberlinization Laboratory. Produced for the occasion, special banknotes – known as Afro-Quilombo, designed as a tribute to the resistant quilombolas – are put in circulation, and visitors can acquire them at the Quilombo Bank in exchange for Brazilian Real or US Dollars. This gesture, beyond its symbolism, is a political one that alludes to a futuristic currency, independent and free from the global foreign exchange markets usually determined by demand and supply speculations, and regulated by economic factors such as inflation, interest rates, and geopolitical events. It enables the free circulation of currencies, at least throughout the Bienal.
In its core approach, Gondwana la fabrique du futur situates itself against established hegemonic structures, such as those of the nation-state, and its vicious mechanisms, such as visa-border regimes, hence providing a space where liberty can be practiced.
