islands traced , cities foreseen.
islands traced, cities foreseen (2024)
Installation view and screening at Cinéma Empire in Dakar.
islands traced, cities foreseen (2024)
26:48 min.
EXHIBITION
Archipelagoes of Bond
RAW Material Company
Cinéma Empire
22 May 2024
* islands traced, cities foreseen (2024) is a rough first sketch for the film-installation Na Caminhu Pa Acácia (2025) set for Janilda Bartolomeu‘s first solo-exhibition in Rotterdam, opening on 4 December 2025. Na Caminhu Pa Acácia is a speculative two-channel film installation which uses the wistful and extra-biblical celebration of San Jon (Saint John The Baptist) as a trojan horse. A trojan horse to seek out how the recently decolonised Cape Verdean diaspora will eventually define their own dreams and their collective imaginations, on their own terms.
islands traced, cities foreseen follows the creation and current transition of the Cape Verdian diaspora’s proverbial Eleventh Island (Rotterdam). It flags the urgencies of this spectral immigrant island that shares its geography with the city of Rotterdam, and represents its people, its knowledges and this island’s imminent first death. This all plays out against the background of rapid gentrification, which threatens to rip apart a previously close-knit community while their first generation dies without transposing their knowledges and stories to the next generations.
The personal narration of the essay film, wonders whether the elder Twelfth Island (Dakar) might provoke a path forward, being the elder diaspora. The film aims to make a connection between the Cape Verdean islands, Rotterdam, and Dakar as their speculative twelfth island. This is a film about the manners in which cities can have a multi-tude of incospicuous lives as well as deaths, due to their colonial legacies. islands traced, cities foreseen preceded Bartolomeu’s residency with RAW Material Company in Dakar where she managed to collect in-deph oral histories about this respective community. Her findings will find their way into the upcoming Na Caminhu Pa Acácia (2025) film installation and a print publication set for December 2026 in collaboration with RAW Material Company.