Mood Indigo
Reflections on the Afrasian Sea

by Fabrizio Mifsud Soler.

All photos: Luca Girardini/Gropius Bau

Gropius Bau in Berlin is currently presenting Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora – a multi-chapter exhibition shedding light on the long and continual history of water-based exchanges that have generated cultural and social affinities between the African and Asian continents.

The ocean that stretches between Asia, Oceania and Africa – from Africa’s Swahili coast, through the Arabian Peninsula, up to Western Oceania – is known by many names; one of them being the Afrasian Sea. This body of water has been continuously marked by hybridity, displacement and diasporic passage.

The exhibition takes visitors from ancient routes of transregional exploration, trade and seasonal migration, up through contemporary Afro-Asian geopolitical, economic and cultural exchanges. It lends research on such timely subjects as the economics of materials and commodities, labour practices and indentured labour, the history and architecture of epidemics and quarantine, climate and ecological disruptions, cultural and material syncretism, migratory, trade and economic routes, and the interdependence of human and non-human entities.

“Different waves of migration have shaped Germany; and Berlin is one of the epicentres of African and Asian diasporas. With Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora we intend to awaken or reactivate the memories of these histories. As a pluriversal city, Berlin must afford itself the luxury of encountering its multiple histories, which are reverberations of narratives told and lived across the Indian Ocean, and stories that, from the land-locked space of Berlin, through the African- and Asian-diasporic communities, also echo on, in and through the Afrasian Sea.” — Natasha Ginwala and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, curators of the exhibition

Morphosis exhibition_ph.Federico_Florian

Combining new commissions with existing projects, the presentation traces links between the Asian and African regions, manifesting overlays and diasporic transfers between two areas of increased global political, economic and cultural importance in the 21st century. The Indian Ocean emerges as a communal horizon that reveals shades of cultural, linguistic, political and historical passage from ancient times to the present.

Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora curated by Natasha Ginwala and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung with Michelangelo Corsaro is open until August 13th 2023 at Gropius Bau, Berlin.