Colonial Medness: Feminist-Indigenous Cosmologies
Yaniya Mikhalina
Colonial Mədness is both an artist book and an inter-colonial theoretical memoir: Mikhalina’ photographic work, writing, archival material, maps, diagrams, poetry, and contributions from other artists and researchers come togheter in a pluriverseal visual and conceptual architecture. Beginning in the İdel-Ural region and Mikhalina’s Tatar inheritance, the book stretches to the Caucasus, Western Siberia, Setooma, Sápmi, Lebanon, and Brazil. At its core the book, investigates the colonial reorganization of worlds and its effects on psychic life, language, bodies, memory, spirituality, and relations to land.
The book approaches these questions through multiple forms of knowledge. Psychoanalysis encounters Tatar feminist thought and fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence; Indigenous perspectives engage with archival and linguistic research; personal and intergenerational memory encounters colonial history; poetry and oral traditions engage with theoretical writing. Rather than
presenting a singular body of knowledge, the book remains faithful to the preindustrial İdel-Ural Islamic manuscript tradition, where collective readership was indispensable to the acquisition of knowledge.
This principle also informs the book´s collaborative making. It grew through conversations, friendships, life encounters, and collaborations, with each essay and conversation gathered in it altered its conceptual architecture. Anna Belchikova, Joana da Palma Monbaron and Désirée Simões Silva contribute to a rethinking of psychoanalysis from multiple “Third Worlds”. F. and G. contribute parallel diaries emerging from an exhibition concerned with Turkic cosmology, grief, artistic practice and political repression. Keto Gorgadze examines imperial victimhood and the affective organisation of Russian whiteness. Samira Makki approaches witnessing, loss and anti-colonial solidarity through Palestine and Lebanon. Lida Ilina addresses design, Chuvash and Seto inheritances, displacement and Indigenous memory. Al-Bistawi contributes research intoTatar healing manuscripts, reconnecting word, body, soul and orality.
Colonial Mədness is both an artist book and an inter-colonial theoretical memoir: Mikhalina’ photographic work, writing, archival material, maps, diagrams, poetry, and contributions from other artists and researchers come togheter in a pluriverseal visual and conceptual architecture. Beginning in the İdel-Ural region and Mikhalina’s Tatar inheritance, the book stretches to the Caucasus, Western Siberia, Setooma, Sápmi, Lebanon, and Brazil. At its core the book, investigates the colonial reorganization of worlds and its effects on psychic life, language, bodies, memory, spirituality, and relations to land.
The book approaches these questions through multiple forms of knowledge. Psychoanalysis encounters Tatar feminist thought and fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence; Indigenous perspectives engage with archival and linguistic research; personal and intergenerational memory encounters colonial history; poetry and oral traditions engage with theoretical writing. Rather than
presenting a singular body of knowledge, the book remains faithful to the preindustrial İdel-Ural Islamic manuscript tradition, where collective readership was indispensable to the acquisition of knowledge.
This principle also informs the book´s collaborative making. It grew through conversations, friendships, life encounters, and collaborations, with each essay and conversation gathered in it altered its conceptual architecture. Anna Belchikova, Joana da Palma Monbaron and Désirée Simões Silva contribute to a rethinking of psychoanalysis from multiple “Third Worlds”. F. and G. contribute parallel diaries emerging from an exhibition concerned with Turkic cosmology, grief, artistic practice and political repression. Keto Gorgadze examines imperial victimhood and the affective organisation of Russian whiteness. Samira Makki approaches witnessing, loss and anti-colonial solidarity through Palestine and Lebanon. Lida Ilina addresses design, Chuvash and Seto inheritances, displacement and Indigenous memory. Al-Bistawi contributes research intoTatar healing manuscripts, reconnecting word, body, soul and orality.