Gedeelde grond (‘Shared ground’) 10: listen to a new episode with Nyiragasigwa Hens

Summary

Showing and celebrating identities that aren’t always being showed and celebrated: it is something that keeps recurring in the day-to-day life and work of Nyiragasigwa Hens.

For years she focused on this at the academy in Brussels and Anderlecht, at various art colleges and other places where she was teaching. In class all languages could be spoken – you could write poetry in your own mother tongue. Just to show: look, both languages are equally important. Today she no longer teaches, but she still – and especially – works with young people with complex identities, including through the project of dekapers in hetpaleis (Antwerp): a meeting place and theater workshop for young people under 18. Although that does not currently involve a mixed group of young participants – in the sense that the group is predominantly white – Nyiragasigwa searches each time for each person’s dual identity.

Everyone has a dual identity, from which she believes you can draw strength each time. This can be about a dual ethnic or cultural identity, but also about other intersectionalities such as gender and socioeconomic class. Sometimes people are unaware of this themselves, and she tries to further discover this through individual or collective pathways (as, for example, with dekapers) and draw positive energy out of it.

When she looks at young talent, she mainly shrugs off the idea that young people today are less engaged than they used to be. There is rather an individual commitment, it is more like a specific statement. Someone who is vegetarian is just as activist as someone who is on the barricades, for example.

And that individual perception also plays a role in how young audiences view art. Today, people often worry about the gaze with which young people view theater and performance, sometimes in an almost prudish way. Nyiragasigwa, too, has observed this with themes about nudity and queerness on stage, but she wonders how much of it has to do with prudishness. It may also be related to the fact that you can experience a lot of things individually today – at home or on your cell phone. You interpret and process that individually. However, when young people go to the theater collectively, for example with their class, they may be overloaded with certain feelings that they deal with and talk about differently as a group than on an individual basis.

Nyiragasigwa considers art by and for youth as important, or perhaps even more important than other forms of creating. Young people are increasingly making themselves heard as the voice of the future, and they also really have something to say: they share what they like, what they like to see and what their opinions are. The internet is playing an important role in this, and especially thanks to the various role models who are building a platform there. She can only welcome this change.

Finally, Nyiragasigwa shares the vision of the future she wishes for our arts field, and that is to tell stories that offer healing and peace. Stories that are not necessarily translated from pain, or from a certain sense of minority. This is happening more and more today, but still not enough. She hopes that people can tell their stories more from their own experiences and identity, and less from people who have a certain image or fantasy about them. On the other hand, she also shares her nightmare, or what worries her: namely, subsidy policies in the art world and the increasing need to be self-sufficient.

Download the full transcription here (in English)

Future projects

Nyiragasigwa is currently working on a performance called Kruimeldief with Hind and Zahra Eljadid. She is also working on a project that is still in its early stages: a monologue based on the texts of young girls with mental vulnerability, together with Anse Lagaisse and Sofian Dhondt. Dhondt, as a music therapist, already made music for this with some participants, Unmuted Stories, which you can listen to below (via Spotify).