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Enuma Okoro

@enums

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Being
Writing, curating, art, histories, women, inheritance, embodied spiritual practice.
📍Berlin
The Art of Life @financialtimes
Enuma.substack.com

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It is a blessing to live a lengthy life, let alone such an influential and inspiring one. And yet, the passing of a woman with a brilliant mind and fierce spirit like Gloria Steinem is still felt and recognized as a loss. Rest in peace and power as you continue on…
“Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.” ~ Gloria Steinem by @enums

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The first time I met His Holiness I had been invited to Rome with a small group to speak about writing, creativity, spirituality and storytelling. His Holiness had an expansive,barrier-breaking understanding of love, and love as a verb. He invited about 40 of us to the Vatican because he wanted to meet us. He shared a message of how he thinks of the artist’s role. A short segment below…
“I am happy to meet you in the course of this Conference that has assembled poets, writers, scriptwriters and directors from various parts of the world to discuss the topic of poetic imagination and Catholic inspiration. In these days you have reflected on the ways that faith challenges contemporary life and in this way seeks to respond to the thirst for meaning.... Artists are those who with their eyes both see and dream....
Let me say something else: You are also the voice of the “restlessness” of the human spirit. You know quite well that artistic inspiration is not only consoling but also disquieting, since it presents both the beautiful and the tragic realities of life. Art is the fertile terrain where the “polar oppositions” of reality[2] can be expressed with a language that must be creative, flexible and capable of serving as a vehicle for powerful messages and visions....
I am referring not only to social criticism, but also to the deep struggles of the soul, the complexity of decision-making, the contradictions of our human existence. There are things in life which at times we can barely grasp, or find adequate words to express.
This is your own fertile terrain, your proper field of activity. It is often the place too where we encounter God, in an experience which is always “superabundant”, like an overflowing basin. That is the challenge I would like to present to you today: to go beyond set bounds, to be creative without downplaying your own spiritual restlessness and that of humanity. To embrace, poetically, the anxious yearnings present in the human heart, lest they grow cold and fade away.”
~ Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to invited participants, Conference ‘The Global Esthetics of the Catholic Imagination’ (May 27, 2023)

May he rest in eternal peace. by @enums

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With such gratitude to all participating artists,
@haleymellin
@lornasimpson @studioolafureliasson @rashidjohnson @jennyholzerstudio
@adamadelphine
@pamelaphatsimo
@cas_amandaa
#KikiSmith
#BillieZangewa
#AmaCodjoe

and to EVERYONE who visited the exhibition, The Flesh of the Earth. And to @hauserwirth and all the many many hands behind the scenes. It’s always a team effort. Art is essential to life, and curating this show and seeing it exude its own energy was a deep joy. Here’s to the next 🤞🏽…

(And with thanks to @melalcena for so many beautiful photos 📸) by @enums

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3 years ago

✍🏽 my monthly love letter 💌 sent your way yesterday if you’re a subscriber. Just some thinking about this season of changes and what may need to stay consistent in our lives.
“A Little Heart to Heart” @enuma.substack.com by @enums

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16 days ago

Friederike Schilbach presented Damentoilette 📖 at HOTEL ZOO BERLIN, joined by Enuma Okoro and Fan Xiaochun for an evening of readings and conversation, moderated by Isabel R Salgado✨

#hotelzooberlin #graceberlin #bookreading #authorreading #berlin taken in HOTEL ZOO BERLIN by @enums

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A bit ago I was looking at submission guidelines for a literary journal and came across 5 little words that stopped me in my tracks. Necessary words but also sobering ones for the times we’re in. And it led me to ✍🏽 ✍🏽 this piece for my column “The Art of Life” about the current “Intelligence” Age we’re in and how it may not be too long before we have to show proof of our humanity in ways we seem so strangely reluctant to do now. Also I finally got to write a bit about The Tower of Babel narrative from the Book of Genesis - a story I find so chockful of lessons and interpretive possibilities. My years and theological training at Divinity school flood back to me 🙃. (And yes I’m very aware of George Steiner’s engagement with the narrative. That could be a different lovely contemplative essay) . Full piece online and in print in this weekend’s pink 🗞️ @financialtimes @ft_weekend
Also, I’m curious…before you read the piece, what do you see in the Giacometti painting? 🖼️ by @enums

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20 days ago

Last month I spent some time as a writer-in-residence with Temporars Susch, the residency program arm of a very special museum, Muzeum Susch, nestled in the Engadin Valley in Switzerland. @muzeumsusch is an extraordinary place - architecturally, creatively and historically. Housed in a former medieval monastery complex that was an ancient stop along the Camino de Santiago (elements which you know I love), the museum centers attention on the work of both modern and contemporary female artists, emphasizing the work of women whose creative brilliance and tenacious spirit enabled their making despite the lack of recognition or being taking as seriously as male artists during their historic periods.
I find this an equally remarkable place because of the location, nestled between the mountains and alongside a (sometimes) roaring river (which I immediately befriended).
I found elements of all the things that are of deep meaning and interest for me: Art, female interiority, the natural world, spirituality (the history of the buildings and foundation)…sounds like a dream doesn’t it?

Izabella Gustowska (Dreams in Black I, II) 1992, 1994

Tracy Emin “There Was So Much More of Me”, 2019

Mariuccia Secol (From the II Genesis series, 1969)

Mariuccia Secol (From the II Genesis series, 1969) by @enums

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22 days ago

Been slowly making my way through this consideration of Simone Weil, the French philosopher, social activist and mystic who died in 1943 at only 34 years old. Most recognize her simply by her famous quote about attention, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” (Yes, people have been thinking about attention as devotion long before beloved poet Mary Oliver). Weil likened attention to prayer, and also believed that any effort to alleviate suffering had to begin with and remain grounded in attention. But like any human being she was so much more than her famous quotes, and it has been both a painful and inspiring read to consider her life within its historical context, the force of raging fire with her for justice, the determination to break free of restrictive gender-based roles, and the deep and curious hunger of her spiritual openness and seeking heart.
I think it is always relevant (and convicting) to consider how the human heart has wrestled with what it means to be alive and living with purpose, what it means to recognize the holy (often disruptive) calls on our lives and what it means to understand ourselves as woven tightly to the collective fabric of humanity and creation. I think these considerations (of the lack thereof) change everything about how we choose to live, no matter how long such transformations might take within us…
I am also a longtime fan of the author, the psychiatrist Robert Coles who recently died this past June at the age of 97. He wrote extensively about the inner lives and outer realities of children, and about the importance of a moral imagination and of stories. I read three of his books years ago, “The Spiritual Life of Children,” “The Call of Service” and “The Call of Stories.” He had a beautifully compassionate and intelligent mind - which is always a winning combo. by @enums

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The weekend was good 🖤 by @enums

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Caravaggio’s Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy (c. 1606) painting was said to be lost for centuries. But in 2014, a painting was found and said to be an authenticated original. I saw it recently in Berlin where it was placed in dialogue with new work by Belinde De Bruyckere at The Italian Embassy in Germany. Through @offsite_arts and @italyingermany. by @enums

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I love the various paintings of the legend of St Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan monk, preaching to the fishes. (I also love the word “fishes” 😀.)
✍🏽 Writing a little this weekend on centering non-human animal life. And encouraging everyone to keep reading Mary Oliver. I’ve been returning to her poetry for the last twenty years and always always something shifts within me.
“The Art of Life” in print in the pink 🗞️ @financialtimes and online this weekend.

The way people think about the relationship between God and matter has always fascinated me. The strange need to separate the holy from the body and the embodied, to keep what is sacred at a distance from our very selves and the flesh and soil of the earth is to me the antithesis of creative energy, of God. But that’s for another time :-)

I saw the fantastic exhibition “La Suède sauvage” of Swedish painter Bruno Liljefors, in November 2024 at Petit Palais in Paris. And so many of the works have stayed with me. He helped reestablish the genre of animal painting in late 19th / early 20th century Sweden. There was nothing romantic about his depictions, just honoring the lives of animals through the cycle of life and death. Really wonderful. by @enums

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“Cosmas and Damian Heal the Deacon Justinian” 1435 / 1440
Fra Angelico and Zanobi Strozzi
@kunsthauszuerich by @enums

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2 months ago