EN
EKWE BILÉ - CHAINZ
Anna Ehrenstein & Jeanne-Ange Wagne
Silver necklaces
Anna Ehrenstein Jeanne Ange Wagne necklace 1 1

EKWE BILÉ - CHAINZ are a tribute and, even more so, an additional link in the chain to the often overlooked but never forgotten historical resistance and initiatives against Western imperialism, colonialism, and racism.
In commemoration of the endeavors of anti-colonial initiatives such as the 1929 German Section of The League for the Defense of the Negro Race, the protests and the activism of Africans living in Berlin at the time, Anna Ehrenstein and Jeanne-Ange Wagne translate this fundamental, emblematic chain and its links into the material. Highlighting the presence of their absence in institutionalised German memory culture, EKWE BILÉ - CHAINZ make visible, tangible and wearable the legacy of figures like Joseph Ekwe Bilé – one of the most vocal German-speaking Cameroonian activists of the Weimar era.

Anna Ehrenstein lives between Berlin, Tirana, and the cloud and works in various mediums in artistic or curatorial production, examining how technology and digital-material culture reshape power relations. She investigates varying forms of knowledge and their constructions through south-south collaborations and redistribution of global north resources.
Jeanne-Ange Wagne is a Cameroonian-diasporic art historian and creative whose theoretical research and practice of art education are oriented towards necessary questions of social justice, solidarity and self-determination. Currently, she is critically examining Western historiography in particular, addressing colonial entanglements that affect cultural and educational institutions.