Third Text

22 April 2025

Pauline de Souza

‘uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things’, the Liverpool Biennial, 10 June – 17 September 2023

Eleng Luluan, Ngialibalibade – to the Lost Myth, 2023, installation view at Princes Dock, Liverpool Biennial 2023, photo by Rob Battersby, courtesy of Liverpool Biennial

The 2023 Liverpool Biennial came rushing in from the cold as the pandemic slowly declined. It was here to make a mark in Liverpool and on the country nationally. The exhibition was curated by Khansille Mpongwe, from Cape Town, South Africa – an artist, writer and independent curator who wanted the Biennial to reflect her creative practice. This 12th edition, entitled ‘uMoya’, which means ‘the sacred return of lost things’, had big shoes to fill. It was expected to heal or smooth over the racial differences in the city. The Victoria Gallery and Museum, just prior to the Biennial opening, had held an exhibition of photographic portraits by Ean Flanders of fifty important people from the Caribbean community, entitled ‘The Descendants’ (from 28 January – 13 May). ^[1]  These were portraits of respected individuals in the community, yet the people of African and Caribbean origin in the city still face discrimination. The Liverpool Caribbean African centre closed in 2007 but it remains an important point of contact for this community, especially for those living in the district known as Liverpool 8. Observing the Liverpool Biennial as a mixed race woman myself who has roots in the Caribbean, it was clear that it was expected to engage with the culture wars dominating the political conversations in the country nationally. These culture wars derived from the Black Lives Matter movement and the violence against women and transgender rights that remain part of British politics today. Mpongwe said that her connection to her ancestors guided her as she put together the exhibition – but can those ancestors have a full understanding of the problems in Liverpool, and nationally? The answer is no. But there was the city, and the financial aspect to the city cannot be ignored, and the Biennial, consisting of thirty-two artists, had to ensure it addressed the city and its issues. Yet on this occasion most of the participating artists were international artists, when previous editions had aimed to support more local and regional artists and curators.

The first Liverpool Biennial took place in 1999, organised by Lewis Biggs and Bryan Biggs and funded by James Moores, the supporter of the John Moores Painting Prize. The conversation between them had centred on the need to support local artists and on the revival of the city. Earlier, Moores had become aware that the Young British Artists (YBAs), centred as they were in London, were selling and that this was attracting money to the East End of the capital as well as encouraging collectors to invest in their work. Moores was a wealthy artist himself and knew some of the YBAs. Originally he had wanted to buy the Rochelle School building in east London, where he could provide artists’ studios without charging high rents, or create a London assembly promoting Liverpool artists. The idea was that the funds generated from the studios would go to fund artists and art projects in Liverpool. But it was an idea that did not come to fruition. Instead, money had to come from elsewhere and after turning down Tate Liverpool’s appeal for a donation, Moores decided to put money instead into the first biennial in Liverpool, where he gave a million pounds for Liverpool artists to develop the existing art scene. Earlier, Moores had developed The New Contemporaries in the same year that Tony Bond, an independent curator who had some experience curating biennials, was hired to curate the first edition of the Liverpool Biennial – an international exhibition that had overlooked local Liverpool artists. ‘Trace’, as the first Biennial was titled, achieved the objectives of the funders, attracting additional visitors and bringing international press coverage to the city. Subsequent biennials equally attracted press coverage and as a branded cultural festival sought out funding. But the 2023 Biennial was different. It was the first time an African curator had been invited, and external money had been coming into the city (European money, for instance) to highlight the musical culture of the city, when little was being given from Liverpool City Council to the African Caribbean community who actually live in the city.

‘The Sacred Return of Lost Things’ was meant to address the history and temperament of the city while demanding that works deal with ancestral and Indigenous knowledge, wisdom and healing. This all comes from the Zulu language, with uMoya meaning breath, air, climate, and healing. Edgar Calel, exploring his Mayan Kaqchikel heritage, created Ru k'ox k'ob'el jun ojer etemab'el (The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge). Hosted at Tate Liverpool, it did eventually join the Tate collection. Fruit and vegetables sit on rocks in honour of the artist’s ancestral people and his home, and a ritual was also performed with the work. The work was also shown at Frieze Art Fair, where its aesthetic value was paramount. It was difficult to ignore the commercialisation of the work; the relationship to the stylistic set ups for food photography (as in Marks & Spencer’s food advertising, for example) came to mind when looking at it.

Edgar Calel, Ru k’ox k’ob’el jun ojer etemab’el (The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge), 2021, Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool, photo by Mark McNulty, courtesy of Liverpool Biennial

Taiwanese artist Eleng Luluan built a pod from string and mixed media to take us closer to nature, performing a ritual to take us there. Ngialibalibade, in the artist’s language (according to the Biennial’s website) means ‘a happening’ or ‘a state of going through’, and reflects the artist’s memory of growing up in Kucapungane, an Indigenous village in Taiwan. Performing a welcoming ritual, whose symbolic tone is better comprehended by people who understand the language, is an invitation to get closer to nature. The notion of ‘getting closer to nature’ is universally understood, more so than the ritual itself. The pod-like shape of the work had little connection to its location, Princes Dock, Liverpool Waters. The natural disasters of landslides and typhoons are common in the south Taiwan region – but not in Liverpool. I can only assume that an understanding of climate change, or our lack of it, is meant to signal the universal appeal of this work.

Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, video still from Respire (Liverpool), 2023, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wonnerth-Dejaco, Vienna

Belinda Kazeem Kamiński, an artist based in Vienna, created Respire at FACT, stressing the importance of breath – in this case, Black breath – and how collective breathing can be liberating. Openings used red, black and green balloons to send coded reminders of the liberation struggles faced by the African diaspora, as well as the struggles for Black freedom. It was not exactly clear how this freedom could be achieved; blowing into balloons and letting the breath out does not equal liberation. Running water in a fountain placed in the middle of a darkened room creates boundary lines that can be easily broken. In contrast, Binta Diaw, a Senegalese artist, created the installation Chorus of Soil at the Tobacco Warehouse, where soil mapped out the eighteenth-century slave ship ‘Brookes’. Almost to scale, this work made the connections between Liverpool and Africa’s west coast. But this image of the slave ship keeps being over-displayed, as many artists have used the same image to highlight the roots of contemporary Britain’s capitalism in the slave trade. Diaw’s work narrates how 454 enslaved African people were assigned a small space in which to turn as they were shackled to the ship, and how many lost their lives when thrown overboard as the boat tried to outrun an anti-slavery ship. Ships transporting enslaved Africans were insured, but the insurance would not pay for sick slaves or those who died from an illness; it would, however, cover the cost of enslaved individuals lost through drowning. The contrast of Diaw’s work with Torkwase Dyson’s intimidating sculptures, Liquid a Place (2021), was monumental. Appearing as curved ships, Dyson’s work stands for Britain’s first commercial wet dock that was constructed in 1715 from the proceeds of trafficking of people. It was, afterall, housed in the Tate Liverpool building, and the building derives its name from the Tate sugar company that generated its capital from the free labour of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean sugar plantations. Dyson’s work is a reference to the poem ‘The Ship They Called The Zong’, about the ship from which, in 1781, 132 slaves were thrown overboard into the ocean. The Liverpool syndicate which financed the Zong, that included the mayor of the city, claimed insurance on the drowned slaves. The poem, by the Canadian M NourbeSe Phillip, was written in 2008 and comprises words taken from the trial. The layering of words draws out the massacre in a poetic manner.

Binta Diaw, Chorus of Soil, 2023, Liverpool Biennial 2023 at the Tobacco Warehouse, photo by Mark McNulty, courtesy of Liverpool Biennial

Torkwase Dyson, Liquid a Place, 2021, Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool, photo by Mark McNulty, courtesy of the Liverpool Biennial

Melanie Manchot’s Stephen was commissioned for the Biennial and was also housed in the Tobacco Warehouse, although it was separate from the main space where Diaw’s work could also be seen. As a fictional documentary, Manchot creates the narrative of Thomas Goudie, a bank clerk whose gambling addiction led to his arrest. In the multichannel and single-screen installation, actors and non-actors are used to tell the true story – which achieved international acclaim as the first crime reconstruction of the nineteenth century. Even though it is not obvious that the work has any direct connection to Western imperialism, it does highlight Western imperial aspirations. As a clerk in the Bank of Liverpool, Goudie desired the highlife, not the mundane routine offered to the lower middle classes. Yet the film, although powerful, is disconnected from the biennial theme of ‘Western imperialism’. And this is not the first time this particular topic has been explored: filmmakers Mitchell and Kenyon produced The Arrest of Goodie in 1901. Manchot has had a longstanding collaboration with Stephen Giddings, who takes on the lead role and whose character is the protagonist in the film.

Melanie Manchot, film still from Stephen, 2023, courtesy Parafin, London and Galerie m, Bochum, image credit: Melanie Manchot/Andrew Schonfelder

Peru-based artist Fátima Rodrigo Gonzales’s Holograms and Contradanza use fashion photography, including traditional dress, to emphasise the commodification of Indigenous women. But the symbolic references embedded in the traditional dress are not universally comprehended, and, it could be said, continue to lead to the commodification of women. They remain subjects with no identity; their clothing is seen as costume-like, and the postures they perform make them appear as actors. The title Contadanza comes from a traditional Spanish dance. The Peruvian servants used their clothing to signal their perception of the colonisers and how their country was exploited.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s video installation Mumbo Jumbo and the Committee (2022) features women and men in Victorian dress, ‘the Committee’, looking across the room at a projector. The work unifies the geology of the places where the artist has lived (she has lived in parts of Africa and southest Asia). The construction of the video installation (at the Tate Liverpool building) alludes to the characters’ ethnic background, relying on a narrative construction where the audience is invited to observe the characters as they sit on wooden benches.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Mumbo Jumbo and The Committee, 2022, Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool, photo by Stuart Whipps, courtesy of Liverpool Biennial and Galerie Lelong & Co, New York

British artist Charmaine Watkiss’s installation Witness (2023), housed at the Victoria Gallery and Museum, was also a Biennial commission. Seen through the eyes of two female deities, a story is told of adversity. The drawing of the two women represents symbols of collective thought and reflection. But the images were weak, a case of concept overruling artistic ability. In acknowledging that the idea itself is important, there is, however, a weakness in the drawing, with a slapdash element to the figures – with the pretence of producing ‘primitive’ work to help with the healing process. Again, references to slavery dominate. South African artist Lungiswa Gqunta’s installation Sleeping Pools – Brewing (2023) at the Corn Exchange deployed illuminated bedframes to address the subject of displacement. Apartheid and colonialism are rooted in capitalism, and the presence of the smell of petrol in the installation was crucial for that link to capitalism.

Julien Creuzet, from France, at the Tobacco Warehouse, produced Orpheus: Orpheus was musing upon braised words, under the light rain of a blazing fog, snakes are deaf and dumb anyway, oblivion buried in the depths of insomnia (2022). The fragmented work comes together as a whole opera that addresses the Afro-Caribbean legacy and Creole philosophy, as well as literature. The title of the work comes from Creuzet’s own poems. The work and the poems question how geographical locations are important for comprehending cultural production. It was important to have some comprension of the cultural references, but without this the meaning of the work could be obscure. Any reference to Black history is diluted by the lack of clarity. Lorin Sookool, a South African dance artist for whom improvision is central, performed Woza Wenties in the ruins of St Luke’s church; the piece explored South African social justice and highlighted violence on the Black body. Personal references dominated the performance and many of the audience had some association to South African racial apartheid. In this case, we are referring to the Brown body as part of racial segregation; the Brown body is the mixed-race body, which experiences violence from all sides.

Julien Creuzet’s Orpheus: Orpheus was musing upon braised words, under the light rain of a blazing fog, snakes are deaf and dumb anyway, oblivion buried in the depths of insomnia, 2022, at the Tobacco Warehouse, Liverpool Biennial 2023, photo by Mark McNulty, courtesy of Liverpool Biennial

Since the works in the Biennial all dealt with colonialism in their own way, the question of healing becomes a question of whom the healing was for. The curator claimed that she did speak to the Afro-Caribbean community in Liverpool 8, but they were not interested in being involved. They felt they had been overlooked for financial support from the city and that enough damage was done to them with the surveillance of the area by the local police force. For them, there was a sense that the city centre was out of bounds. The Biennial’s own evaluation report stated that 763,140 visits were made to the Biennial, and that total visitor numbers were 101,911, with 25 per cent identified as coming from the global majority. Of the number of visitors, only a small percentage had identified as Black/Black Caribbean, while 50 per cent identified as being White British. So it seems that the Biennial’s concern about healing was only able to reach a small audience. But it was the economic value that made more of an impact. The first Liverpool biennial had to bring money into the city, relying on James Moores to donate those funds. It was important for Moores to support local curators, because in his view local curators had talents equivalent to international curators. The 12th edition, in 2023, raised £13.1 million, and it was essential that the social, cultural and economic impact contributed to the city in a positive way, and that it allowed for all local communities to be part of the experience and of the city. This point was written in the director’s own evaluation report. It meant that the civic partners had to cater for a diverse audience. This audience was considered in terms of race, gender and location – and by location, people were asked how local or international they were.

Lorin Sookool, Woza Wenties!, live performance at St Luke’s bombed out church, Liverpool Biennial 2023, photo by Mark McNulty, courtesy of the artist and Liverpool Biennial

As the Biennial opened, the opening of the Liverpool Art Fair, showing local and regional artists, was also taking place simultaneously. But the Art Fair received limited coverage; it was mentioned in the local listings newspaper but it had no budget for marketing. Artist Fiona Stirling informed me that the aim of the Art Fair was to revive or recreate the fair of 1998/1999, the same one that was supported by James Moores and which resulted in him supporting the first Liverpool biennial. The 2023 Liverpool Art Fair had more of a concern with educating the audience in the value of culture through running workshops, but it did also sell work to the public. Compared to the invited artists, and especially the international artists, the local and regional artists were more insignificant because their work is of much lower economic value. Without such marketable reputations, their more affordable art perhaps caters to a sector that genuinely requires education in the value of art. The Biennial audience, on the other hand, is educated about colonialism and the economic history of Liverpool, including the cultural value of art for the city. CRBE, the commercial estate agents with an office in Liverpool, were the main sponsor of the Fair. Cass Art was a partner of the ‘A Beginner’s Guide To Portraits’ workshop, while the Business and Intellectual Property Centre was the partner of a programme of events where artists could learn to be professional artists or build on the existing experiences of a professional artist. What James Moores wanted, when he gave his support to the first Liverpool biennial, was to raise the creative ability of Liverpool artists to enable artists to be seen as investable for London collectors, as well as public cultural stakeholders in Liverpool, such as the Bluecoat Gallery.

The Liverpool Arab Arts Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2023. The Festival’s main criteria was to invite Arab artists and those with Arabic heritage, or who identify as Arab, those who shape their own history using their cultural heritage, not the Western model, to think about their own modern identity. The 2023 Liverpool Biennial and the Arab Arts Festival both used the streets of the city to reconstruct their identity – to make themselves visible, and to have a voice that demanded to be heard. The first Liverpool Biennial, curated by Tony Bond, also commissioned international artists to make their mark on the city. But it was the following biennials that used the structure of Future Fest, an earlier arts festival supporting Liverpool artists. John Bradley, the founder of Future Fest, clearly stated that the Liverpool Biennial used the pattern of commissioning art for derelict buildings, and in alternative venues around the city. The intentions of both the Biennial and the Arab Arts Festival was to somehow take control of the narrative, to build a picture of the make-up, history and heritage of the city – not to undermine the current narrative but to address the  development and roots of the city and the experience of living in it. In today’s climate, we are still struggling with ‘woke’ issues. ‘Woke’ refers, among much else, to awareness and understanding of social problems such as racism and misogyny – themes that were expressed throughout the 2023 Liverpool Biennial.

Funding can require institutions to deal with social issues, to educate people about social injustice but equally to challenge people who disagree with so-called ‘woke’ concerns. In the current political climate, opportunities for ethnic communities are being challenged because the need to provide or make allowances for these communities are being questioned. But, the narratives put forward by ethnic communities themselves should also be questioned. The 2023 Liverpool Biennial failed to address the enslaving of Africans by Africans. Liverpool, corporately, had tried to turn both the trade in enslaved peoples, and the notion of multiculturalism, into part of a celebratory civic narrative in a way designed to deflect genuinely critical inquiry, and the Biennial tended to contribute to that rather than asking harder questions about the role of Africans as enslavers, or current racist attitudes towards migrants within the city.

^[1]   See ‘The Descendants – Portraits by Ean Flanders’ on the Victoria Gallery and Museum’s website

Pauline de Souza is Director of Diversity Art Forum, and has written essays and articles for different publications.