Decolonial Mermaid
2024
performance approx. 30min / video performance
created within #CleanWaters Artistic Residency in
Sulina, Danube Delta, Romania
Text: Nadja Kracunovic
Video / Camera: Marco Verhoogt
The character of the Decolonial Mermaid, born in response to extreme injustice, brutality, and human-inflicted violence, embodies a resistant narrative through water. She performs a decolonizing poem on the coast of Sulina, addressing two seas. The mermaid drowns in the Black Sea and reappears in the Mediterranean, swimming through the Bosphorus, while collecting artifacts from the wars witnessed by these waters. Although the sea is her natural habitat, she fears entering it. By repeatedly stating, "My white body entering the Black Sea," the mermaid confronts personal, racial, cultural, and ecological oppression.
My hands are full of salt,
I swimm with my sisters.
I swimm with my sisters.
Performance, INACT Festival of Mutant Arts, Sale des Colonnes(Strasbourg, April 2025)
Performative reading ‘’Decolonial mermaid’s letters’’, Kultürchen & freiebühnejena (StadtLab Jena, December 2024)
Group exhibition at the Museum Municipal Calarasi (RO)
Screenshots from the video performance (Sulina, Romania, 2024)