Nyabinghi Lab gUG envisions and realizes collaborative projects at the intersections of art, culture, law, education, mental health and activism, with a focus on critical, decolonial narratives and promoting lasting institutional structural change. My collaboration with Nyabinghi Lab ((Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Tmnit Zere, Saskia Köbschall) started in November 2021 as they launched their curated program: Freistaat Barackia: Landscapes of Liberation.

Their extensive research was exhibited at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. and followed by a series of talks, guided tours, podcasts, and discussions. The exhibition takes the history of Barackia (1870-1872), an independent free state founded over 150 years ago by migrant workers and disenfranchised urban dwellers in Kreuzberg, as a starting point to explore decolonial urbanism, resistance, and solidarities. Nyabinghi Lab asks: How are demands of equality interrelated with self-determined spaces in the past and present? How do free communities become laboratories for creative and visionary forms of collectivity? How can urban dwellings be designed in solidarity and equity? Barackia‘s seemingly local history is intertwined with movements and self-determined spaces across five centuries in Berlin and beyond: The exhibition draws a connection between landscapes of liberation from Barackia to Weeksville (Brooklyn), from Congo Square (Louisiana) to Kalakuta Republic (Lagos), from Oranienplatz (Berlin) to the Quilombos dos Palmares (Brazil). [Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and Ausstellungsfonds Kommunale Galerien].

I had the utmost pleasure to brand the collective work via a modular branding approach allowing them to create a sustainable and memorable visual language. It is a maximalist approach developing custom patterns through cutout shapes and layered effects. The direction aims at visually deconstructing Eurocentric understandings of a ‘good’ brand as strictly ‘minimal’ and ‘clean’.

Poster Illustration: Diana Ejaita

Typeface: Halyard by Eben Sorkin, Joshua Darden, and Lucas Sharp. From Darden Studio.

My second encounter with Nyabinghi Lab was through their project The Roots of our Hands Deep as Revolt: Entangled Colonialities of the Green” in collaboration with Kenu – lab’oratoire des imaginaires|chimurenga, HAU Hebbel Am Ufer, and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. The poster series illustrates rooting hands forming abstract/surreal organisms interacting together.

Poster Illustration: Imad Gebrael

Typeface: Halyard by Eben Sorkin, Joshua Darden, and Lucas Sharp. From Darden Studio.