UMUNYANA

Premiere in cooperation with Festival d’Automne, Paris

Born in Gishoma, a small village in Rwanda’s Western Province, in 1993, artist Cedric Mizero employs numerous artistic means of expression, self-taught during exchange with other artists. His SPIELART premiere UMUNYANA combines film, object art and performance while guiding its audience through the fragmented vision of a rural Rwanda of the 2000’s, presented in an installation spanning three rooms in total. In a blend of documentation and fiction, remembrance cleaves its way towards the narrative’s core: The cow as a symbol for a culture’s ambivalence. Driven by a mysterious mental illness, the piece’s protagonist – and with him, the audience – becomes immersed in a stunningly visual ritual that makes the loss of a rural culture palpable, invoking the concealed lines between human, animal, country and historical turning points.