Fotografia: Zé da Paiva, Berlim, 2017

PLANTATION MEMORIES is a compilation of everyday episodes of racism, written in the form of short psychoanalytic stories. From the politics of space and exclusion to the politics of the body and hair, to racial insults, Grada Kilomba dismantles, in a striking way, the normality of racism, exposing the violence and the trauma of being placed as Other. Originally published in English in 2008, Planting Memories has become an important contribution to international academic discourse. Interdisciplinary work, combining postcolonial theory, studies of whiteness, psychoanalysis, gender studies, black feminism and poetic narrative, this is an essential and innovative reflection for decolonial practices.

GRADA KILOMBA is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and theoretician, with roots in Angola and Sao Tome and Principe, born in Lisbon, where she studied psychology and psychoanalysis. In the wake of Frantz Fanon and bell hooks, the author reflects on memory, race, gender, postcolonialism, and her work extends to performance, staging, installation and video. Kilomba intentionally creates a hybrid space between academic and artistic languages, giving voice, body and image to her own texts. Her works were presented at the 32nd Biennial of São Paulo, at the 10th Berlin Biennial, at Documenta 14 and at MAAT, among others. She lives in Berlin, where she holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Freie Universität and was a professor at the Gender Department of the Humboldt Universität.