Sophia Mitiku is a Korean-Ethiopian singer, producer, and sound artist whose sonic practice flows in the intersections of music, ancestry, and landscape. During her residency Sophia will be creating an installative performance in the desert we argue over rivers we can’t see, to be performed at Gaudeamus festival. The piece is a conversation about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) and the regions bound by the Nile’s flow yet divided by its control. It explores the Nile not just as a contested resource, but as a terrestrial body holding memory, history, and a power that has outlasted empires.
Islands of Change confronts the polycrisis – planetary collapse, genocide, war, tech-fascism, and growing authoritarianism – that increasingly leaves us at a loss in the face of the challenges it presents. Co-curated by Julian Rieken with Residenties in Utrecht and Gaudeamus, this long-term initiative asks: How do we reclaim our ‘response-ability’? How do we mobilize our (hyper)local ‘islands’ of artistic action to counteract rigid hierarchies, and in so doing, forge vibrant currents of solidarity? Click here for the full programme of Islands of Change.
This exhibition is part of the Ulysses Platform, co-funded by the European Union.