As part of the "Curator in Residence Program", Ana Raquel Machava, a curator and architect from Maputo, will curate an exhibition in September 2024, which departures from the term "Waithood". The term combines the English words “wait” and “-hood” from adulthood and is coined by anthropologist Alcinda Honwana when trying to describe the state of limbo that the youth, in particular the african and diasporic youth, undergoes in between childhood and adulthood, a prolonged unvoluntary adolescence characterized by instability, informality and improvisation. This phenomenon is a result from failed neoliberalism and global socioeconomic and political crises.

The exhibition is inspired by the inventive interventions from the part of young African and diasporic artists in relation to waithood. Machava’s intervention is interested in understanding how black agency can be read beyond a framework of resistance by elaborating on the conditions, forms, spaces, and temporality in which agency can become effective for the birth of futures otherwise.
 

The "Curator in Residence" program was launched in 2018 as part of the Artist-in-Residence Program (AIR_Frankfurt) by the city of Frankfurt and basis e. V.