Not Fully Human, Not Human at All
With Saddie Choua, Valentina Desideri, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Arely Amaut, Nilbar Güres, Ibro Hasanovic, Jelena Jureša, Doruntina Kastrati, Kaltrina Krasniqi, Pedro Neves Marques, Christian Nyampeta, Daniela Ortiz, Monira Al Qadiri, and Lala Rašcic. Curators: Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Bettina Steinbrügge. The exhibition Not Fully Human, Not Human at All looks into processes of dehumanization that are taking place in Europe. Dehumanization is generally understood as the degradation of human life, performed by human beings upon one another. This exhibition happens at a time when various world-wide states of emergency related to COVID-19 have exacerbated the lack of access to health services as a basic human right; and is concurrent with a rise in extremist Right-wing politics which is inspired by dehumanizing acts of violence. Not Fully Human, Not Human at All takes its name from Donna Haraway’s essay “Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others”, a text which challenges the “universal” claims of Enlightenment Humanism in order to propose conditions of what she calls “non-generic” collective humanity. This new exhibition, symposium and publication focuses on Europe as a geographic and conceptual framework, while reflecting on the dehumanization that characterizes many of the activities that humans have been doing in the name of “humanity” within its borders. It follows up on a three year project initiated by KADIST and curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez that appeared in three different European localities—Kosovo, Portugal, and Belgium—with institutional partners in these contexts.