Muna Mussie
Bologna St.173 – Uroboro
Sowing Archives opened on 1 October 2024 with a performance, by Italian-Eritrean artist Muna Mussie, tied to the artist’s years long—archival, oral and performance based—research into the the Eritrean Congress and festivals that took place in Bologna, Italy, between 1972 and 1991, as part of the nation’s struggle for independence from Ethiopia, which culminated in the exhibition, Bologna St.173, Un viaggio a ritroso (2023) at MAMbo in Bologna.
Mussie revisited the project through a new performance and the screening of Uroboro (2024), a new video that documents a propitious collective rite. The work acted as the backdrop for Mussie as she performs solo with the help of some props including a series of traditional Eritrean netzela textiles which are, to the artist, the material representations of home-making elsewhere.
Through the activation of pre-existing rituals and the materialization of new ones associated with the forgotten history of the Bologna festivals, Mussie is able to evoke, elaborate and mythologize this history through its sensory, material, and document-based traces. 
