"Am I Evil?" Peggy Guggenheim Collection Edition

In June 2024, on the occasion of the exhibition Jean Cocteau: The Juggler’s Revenge, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presented the Venice edition of the erotic decolonial writing workshop Am I Evil?, organized by Simone Basani with author Ubah Cristina Ali Farah and dramaturg Lucio Guarinoni.

Making art for Cocteau was not only a rich intellectual pursuit but also an erotic practice. This is evident in Cocteau’s illustrations for Jean Genet’s 1947 novel, Querelle of Brest, as well as in his own homoerotic novel, Le Livre Blanc (1928), and the illustrations of its second edition published in 1930.

Eroticism, narrated and depicted, was at the core of Am I Evil?, a workshop which aimed to uncover power dynamics intrinsic to Western culture through decolonial erotic writing practices.

Am I Evil? Peggy Guggenheim Collection Edition

Curated by Simone Basani with Ubah Cristina Ali Farah.

Can erotic writing become a place for decolonial and feminist exploration? How can we use the tools of erotic writing to uncover the power dynamics implicated in the processes of colonisation, discrimination, nanoracism, marginalization, exoticization, abuse, and seduction?

These questions form the basis of Am I Evil?, a workshop process that involved participants in a constant dialogue with each other through a peer-to-peer editing methodology which is not limited to “mere” editing but also a way of communicating through re-writing. The workshop ended with a reading taking place in the exhibition spaces of the museum that resonated with Jean Cocteau’s sensual and political artistic universe.

Credits

Am I Evil? Concept and curatorship: Simone Basani and Alice Ciresola
Am I Evil? writing mentor for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Edition: Ubah Cristina Ali Farah
Dramaturgical assistance for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Edition: Lucio Guarinoni
Co-produced by Peggy Guggenheim Collection and radical_hope
With the support of Università IUAV, Venice
Special thanks to Edoardo Lazzari
Logo design by rien_de_nouveau_ici and Alice Ciresola

Simone Basani (IT/BE) is a curator, dramaturg, and artist. His practice focuses on participatory strategies and remembrance processes that have been or could be activated from a decolonial perspective. The main outputs of this practice are curatorial, often context-specific formats, through which he invites other practitioners to collaborate.
bureau-basani-ciresola.com/

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah is a writer and poet. She was born in Verona to a Somalian father and an Italian mother. She grew up in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, and emigrated with her family due to the civil war in 1991. She lived several years in Hungary, before moving to Rome, Italy. Her first novel, Interamente, was published in 2003 in “El Ghibli,” a journal and important discussion platform dedicated to diaspora and migration literature. Ali Farah collaborates with various newspapers, including Internazionale, la Repubblica, and Giudizio Universale. Her debut novel, Madre piccola, (2007), developed from a short story that won the Lingua madre competition at the Turin International Salon, won the Elio Vittorini prize in 2008.

More info:
+39 0412405430
didattica@guggenheim-venice.it