Djuwa Mroivili
Djuwa Mroivili is a Dutch-Comorian multidisciplinary artist and performer who has a background in classical music, who often incorporates disciplines such as theater, fashion, hair and electronic music in their performances. Mroivili’s work frequently begins from a hyper-personal and vulnerable starting point, which then develops into narratives that resonate with a broader audience. Using humor, irony, fiction, archival research and detailed observations, their work engages with societal issues such as colonization and queerness.
“Sounds of the City is an installation I created based on my research into the politics of, and the violence inherent in, silence and neutrality in classical concert halls and gentrified neighborhoods. My research involved walking through and recording the sounds of public spaces in the area where I grew up, which has since been gentrified and transformed, and in the area where I live now, which is in the early stages of gentrification. Through this process, I became aware of sounds I fear losing: the voices of Black, elderly, Muslim, and disabled people chilling and chatting in public, for example. To me gentrification and the concert hall are both outwashes of the same colonial structure; the classical concert hall represents a dystopian extreme of gentrification—a space of leisure for the rich and white, made possible by the forceful exclusion of Black and Brown bodies perceived as nuisance.”
Picture by: Vlaarflip