Over at Warscapes:
More hereIn April of 2014, artist and sculptor Wangechi Mutu started a photography project on Instagram in memory of the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Leading up to the #Kwibuka20 commemorative events, Mutu's widely seen visual reply to the one hundred days of killing prompted writer Juliane Okot Bitek to respond poetically with 100 Days. "Inspired by the quiet homage to the 1994 Rwanda Genocide," she writes on her website, "...I offer these poetic pieces as a way to think about the way in which we navigate through knowing and understanding the genocide and other wars that endure." The remarkable pieces range from the understated to the frenetic, steeped in the questions and contradictions that arise out of mass violence.
image via Juliane Okot Bitek
Juliane Okot Bitek's first book, Words in Black Cinnamon: A Collection of Poetry, was published in 1998. She is widely published online and in print, in literary magazines such as Arc, Whetstone, Fugue, and Room of One's Own. She recently co-authored a book manuscript, Stories from the Dry Season, a collection of stories dealing with justice and conflict in northern Uganda with activist Grace Acan. Her work focuses on issues of the home, homeland, and diaspora.
I recently chatted with her about 100 Days and other recent projects. Below is our edited conversation.
Jason Huettner: What prompted you to respond poetically to Wangechi Mutu's social media project about the Rwandan genocide?
Juliane Okot Bitek: On April 6, I took special note of Wangechi Mutu's post on Facebook. It was a picture of a forlorn looking woman holding a handwritten sign and it was captioned #100 Days, #Kwibuka 20. I immediately extrapolated that this Kenyan artist was going to be part of a conversation that I wanted to engage with—the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. As a Ugandan woman who now lives in Canada, I have spent much of my adult life thinking about what it means and how to engage artistically with suffering. As an Acholi woman from northern Uganda, I know first hand that devastation on one's own homeland is a different beast and therefore demands a different set of tools for expression. I knew that this presented an opportunity to think about how to engage respectfully along with an artist whose work I've admired immensely for years. So I wrote to her and asked and she said "yes."
