Free To Roam Ziza and Mwanza Blell (in conversation)

Free To Roam is a new body of work by artist Ziza, presented in conversation with Mwenza Blell.

The project explores Western knowledge systems - including religion, art history and scientific inquiry - and how power is upheld across these frameworks.

Drawing on oral histories, speculative world‑building and personal heritage, the work questions how everyday structures produce authority, and whose experiences are recognised, valued or erased.Rather than following a single historical narrative, Free To Roam embraces fragmentation and partial visibility, reflecting how bias often operates within systems that present themselves as neutral or objective.

The event opens by inviting audiences to ‘step into another’s shoes’ - with clean shoes provided for the collective experiment - encouraging reflection on how colonial legacies continue to shape institutions, perception and resistance in daily life.Using embodied, decolonial artistic research and drawing on residencies at culturally significant sites - including the Museo Egizio in Turin and Santiago’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights - Ziza examines how power, exclusion and control are embedded within seemingly ordinary systems and practices.Ziza’s research is part of the international programme Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues - an ambitious conversation between contemporary artists and the museums, archives, and communities that hold and shape Europe’s colonial histories.

Artists from Africa, Europe and South America respond to two central questions: What is the continuing impact of colonial heritage today, and whose stories are given space to be heard?