Migrating to Réunion Island with her parents during her childhood, Myriam Omar Awadi grew up confronting her multiple heritages within various social constellations. Central questions of identity and belonging throughout her life inform her multidisciplinary practice of ceramics, drawing, installation, video, and weaving. As observed in Chiromani, boule à facettes [Chiromani, faceted ball] (2021), which is developed on chiromani—a traditional Comorian fabric used by single women to cover their bodies in order to attend the Grands Marriages ceremonies to which they are usually not welcomed—Awadi uses weaving to create quilts that bring together narratives of otherness from Réunion and Comores. Awadi is also interested in oral histories from women of the Indian Ocean, namely from places like Juzur al Camar, Moheli, Anjouan, Grande Comore, and Mayotte. In Les feux que vos derniers souffles ravivent [The fires your last breaths rekindle] (2018–ongoing), Awadi employs a captivating combination of poetry and visual aesthetics that evoke the rituals of possession known as trumba, a healing practice in Comoros, Madagascar, and Tanzania, where spirits and ancestors are summoned to mend the body. The stories told through these modes evoke female camaraderie and support systems which constitute poetic weapons against colonial patriarchal systems. For Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld, Awadi presents three series of drawings, as an herbarium of pleasure depicting a collection of orgasms. Like the aforementioned practices, they form a subversive constellation of ‘feminist’ resistance that predates the various contem- porary western articulations of the term.

Works in the exhibition: Fleurs jaunes (Yellow flowers) (2012), drawings on paper (from a Moleskine notebook), watercolour, pencil, 13 × 21 cm; Nature morte et petite morte (Still life and little death) (2009), drawings on paper (from a Moleskine notebook), watercolour, pencil, 9 × 14 cm; ‘Die blaue Blume der Romantik’ Penises also bloom (2024), sea water, ultramarine blue watercolour on paper from a Moleskine notebook, 19 × 25 cm cm, Quoted portion of the title taken from Heinrich von Ofterdingen by Novalis. Courtesy of the artist