In the dark, chilly night that sets the opening scene of Hamlet, the King of Denmark’s ghost presents itself to three witnesses on the ramparts of Elsinore’s Castle. This apparition also forms the incipit of Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, the “essay in the night” [1] in which the French philosopher coined the term ‘hauntology’ by fusing the words ‘haunting’ and ‘ontology’. For Derrida, hauntology becomes a surrogate for ontology that can better account for the spectral effects of presence: to be and to live is “to live with ghosts”. [2] This focus on forces of absence in defining the visible has had a vast influence in recent years on theories that wish to investigate the lingering residue of racial history in contemporary life.
[1] Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, Routledge Classics, 2006, p. xvii.
[2] Ibid.
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Sandra Mujinga, Spectral Keepers, installation view at CHART 2021, 2021.
Courtesy of the artist and Croy Nielsen
Strategies of spectrality infuse the work of Sandra Mujinga. In a multimedia practice that encompasses video making, installation, costume design and performance, and that moves seamlessly between the digital and the real world, the artist stresses the political tension between different structures of visibility. Tall, human-like figures covered in oversized garments frequently appear in Mujinga’s exhibitions. These visual vessels for hollow bodies function like the armour that shields the deceased king’s ghost in the cold Shakespearean night. They are both stand-ins for an absent body, a “technical prosthesis” [3] that creates a foreign shell over the spectral body. Furthermore, they prevent the spectator (or witness, in the case of Hamlet) from deliberating on the identity the shell conceals. In his essay, Derrida focuses on the detail of the slit in the armour’s visor, which allows the spirit of Hamlet’s father to see without being seen. Similarly, Mujinga’s figures have heads covered by different types of oversized hoodies that obstruct the visitor’s gaze but allow a potential view from within – see, for example, Spectral Keepers (2021). In this asymmetry between gaze and visibility, Derrida identified the supreme insignia of power.
In some iterations of these humanoid sculptures like Touch-Face 1–3 (2018) and Nkáma, Zómi, Mókó and Libwá (2019), Mujinga elongates their hoodies to the point that they become reminiscent of elephant trunks. This formal gesture is a nod towards the recent discovery that in areas of intense poaching, elephants turn nocturnal to escape human violence. The reduced visibility in darkness provides a way to hide from dominating rule, rebalancing power relations by means of invisibility. Orienting herself towards what Édouard Glissant called ‘opacité’, the artist talks about the potential freedom of “deliberate hiding” [4] of moving through the gloom. As opposed to transparency, opacity delineates the right to escape logics of comprehension, interpreted etymologically by Glissant as appropriation, derived from the vision-centred epistemology of The Enlightenment. Colonial history casts long, dark shadows on that time’s celebration of light as a metaphor for rationality and its power to conceive universal truths.
[3] Ibid, p. 7.
[4] The Nordics: Out of the Shadows Manoeuvring Through the Dark with Sandra Mujinga. Interview in Contemporary And.
![](https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Touch-Face_2018_1.jpg?w=1024&h=1478&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008330&s=c0198d16893ea498ce7d7211577f26af 1024w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Touch-Face_2018_1.jpg?w=768&h=1108&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008330&s=a31af4697aa9fe7c9265332b7f90afb7 768w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Touch-Face_2018_1.jpg?w=512&h=739&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008330&s=4e64db96301bcfda967e8bc444115569 512w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Touch-Face_2018_1.jpg?w=256&h=369&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008330&s=de9a16e379dc690fb00e1ff4f715bbbb 256w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Touch-Face_2018_1.jpg?w=128&h=184&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008330&s=4653854460022d67def9c72a3225f543 128w)
Sandra Mujinga, Touch-Face 1–3, 2018
Courtesy of the artist and Croy Nielsen
![](https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy-Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_Seasonal_Pulses_2019_-Libwa_highres_07_2021-12-10-115451_jmjq.jpg?w=1024&h=1478&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1639137291&s=61828ae1fab5866b6a2c79613e78d8ac 1024w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy-Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_Seasonal_Pulses_2019_-Libwa_highres_07_2021-12-10-115451_jmjq.jpg?w=768&h=1108&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1639137291&s=6ad71ef1e7d76649f66f4b6ae7aaba2e 768w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy-Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_Seasonal_Pulses_2019_-Libwa_highres_07_2021-12-10-115451_jmjq.jpg?w=512&h=739&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1639137291&s=54a5176a7c2732f5d47dc0dbc21bf9ee 512w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy-Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_Seasonal_Pulses_2019_-Libwa_highres_07_2021-12-10-115451_jmjq.jpg?w=256&h=369&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1639137291&s=96ac0f15b8a2ba14d07a839919bcdee7 256w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy-Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_Seasonal_Pulses_2019_-Libwa_highres_07_2021-12-10-115451_jmjq.jpg?w=128&h=184&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1639137291&s=e294f5803165031d6e80ff1a28703738 128w)
Sandra Mujinga, Nkáma, Zómi, Mókó and Libwá, 2019
Courtesy of the artist and Croy Nielsen
To look for shades, however, does not merely mean to search for cover in the folds of the visible; it is also a strategy to investigate the paradoxical nature of visibility. Whilst on the one hand, representation can involve social and political acknowledgement, on the other, images are always subject to the inherent violence of control mechanisms from which they cannot escape. This is especially true in a time when ubiquitous digital surveillance exacerbates the asymmetry between gaze and visibility to the point of making the Panopticon look like an obsoletely gentle concept. Furthermore, beyond the issues of our time’s technological hypervisibility, visual representation has a notably brutal history within the construction of blackness. As Frantz Fanon exposed in Black Skin, White Masks, when the white gaze seizes black bodies, acts of seeing and being seen are then implicated in a process of racialised violation. The challenge lies in the obligation to uncover this violence without falling into the trap of reproducing it via the circulation of its image.
In her practice, Mujinga joins forces with a strain of Black Studies that advocates for the disturbance of visibility as an act of political resistance. Her works do not set out to resolve, but rather to inhabit spaces of ambiguity, finding strategies of defiance in the use of tactics that impede sight. Camouflage, as explored in the three-channel video piece Disruptive Pattern (2018), is one such strategy. In the work, a semi-transparent figure is seen dancing in looped sequences, their face merging invisibly with the grey background and their movement obstructed by digital patterns that have been variously super-imposed. In the video installation Throwing Voice (2016), the artist’s avatar moves back and forth against a chroma key background, partly disappearing within it. The images are accompanied by a voiceover of several black women giving beauty advice on YouTube, including how to treat skin to make it fairer, de facto erasing one’s blackness. The power of invisibility in chroma key green is another reappearing feature in Mujinga’s practice. Used profusely in her videos, the green hue often spills into the exhibition spaces, bathing them in an alien-like atmosphere. This formal strategy is used in her current presentation at the Hamburger Banhof, for which she has been awarded the prestigious Preis Der Nationalgalerie 2021.
![](https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=5120&h=3339&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=587c579b7bf4b22c0370cf3934812e5f 5120w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=4096&h=2671&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=c05d72545f638898cb906952d351f731 4096w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=3072&h=2003&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=56493197cf21e8456016d863ee1162d5 3072w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=2560&h=1669&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=9ab65e9c6c14b05fc380ee02ca3607a4 2560w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=2048&h=1335&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=c49aece84feb6c7e214b0a1b39c0b549 2048w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=1920&h=1252&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=ac14e04534b16287d038154a1468d78a 1920w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=1536&h=1001&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=3127fa6fcd163a18456708caf0301b5b 1536w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=1280&h=834&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=cffe0920a94563f52f5fe94e83e915ab 1280w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=1024&h=667&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=2efc1674dcbe81db3eca2d3e68013632 1024w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=768&h=500&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=5961978c282b2d0ca9a304d5443542be 768w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=512&h=333&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=bb5864ed23398ef8154427465b62e9e9 512w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=256&h=166&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=112637c9b1847898a89d520bb72e0594 256w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen_Sandra_Mujinga_installation_view_2016_Kunstverein_Oslo.jpg?w=128&h=83&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637008999&s=60863fec22d6f9380d9e5f8b735ed8e5 128w)
Sandra Mujinga, Throwing Voice, 2016
Courtesy of the artist and Croy Nielsen
Beyond any digital magic tricks, green is also a colour traditionally associated with ectoplasm: a substance that in Spiritualism is believed to induce the materialisation of spirits. Back to the ghosts that inhabit our present and Mujinga’s work, Avery Gordon has written extensively on haunting as a social phenomenon, focusing on the ingrained presence of the Atlantic slave trade. Gordon disagrees with Derrida on his definition of haunting: while for the latter, the spectre represents the “constitutively unknowable” [5] shaping our existence, for Gordon a “ghost is a real presence that demands its due”. [6] When conceptualised in this more material way, ghosts show up to notify of a wrong that has been repressed, but is nonetheless continuing to shape the present - like Seth’s murdered baby daughter in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In 19th century Spiritualism, ghosts appeared in Victorian living rooms to give space to the marginalised forces of society. Mediums all over the Anglo-Saxon world, primarily women, temporarily surrendered their identities to use their bodies as channels for the manifestation of invisible presences. The medium’s voice became a way to utter the unspeakable, from issues of women’s rights to homosexuality and abolitionism, the ears could reach where the eyes would not. The iconoclastic tendency in Mujinga’s practice is similarly expressed in the artist’s valorisation of the aural over the visual. Working as a DJ and musician, as well as a visual artist, the fluid world of sound is a pervasive feature in her works. This emphasis on music and soundscapes serves not only to escape the visual exploitation of racially marked bodies but could also be read as yet another way to unpack our present through the radical world of ghosts.
[5] Avery Gordon, Some Thoughts on Haunting and Futurity, borderlands 10:2, 2011, p. 2.
[6] Ibid.
![](https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=5120&h=3413&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=3ff0cbb0c0c6c0b304488e9958b237f7 5120w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=4096&h=2730&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=c9c3e6b226f5b3d35e81a369c375211f 4096w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=3072&h=2047&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=3c8a72eba0b7ff2c4da70409ca55104e 3072w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=2560&h=1706&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=68cb807a7c67ffd29166863e046b4564 2560w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=2048&h=1365&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=2903f1acf4e309bb84e090d4791d8e89 2048w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=1920&h=1279&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=06bb97ba52e865399e59c4ddfb9bbca6 1920w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=1536&h=1023&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=8b5ed0091209b2d93065c6aa2b5aa1b8 1536w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=1280&h=853&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=4aef6700682640e474460b081b4a8338 1280w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=1024&h=682&q=82&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=ec08d933c4c1e83ca281949594532dc4 1024w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=768&h=511&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=e81f69c44ff099cf05476f44c7e955e5 768w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=512&h=341&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=a533e45afa9aa9e9127399c9a5e5a7d1 512w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=256&h=170&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=3d84aa3036a233a19dd4b7dd01a28d07 256w, https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/fluffy-tenrec/production/Croy_Nielsen-Sandra_Mujinga-Disruptive_Patterns-2018-Hamburger_2020-Photo_Mathias_Voelzke-Installation_View-02.jpg?w=128&h=85&q=60&fm=jpg&fit=crop&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1637009452&s=480ad67609890c35a580215fbd4cf164 128w)
Sandra Mujinga, Disruptive Pattern, 2018
Courtesy of the artist and Croy Nielsen
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Francesca Astesani is an independent curator and writer based in Copenhagen. She is one of the directors and funders of curatorial agency South into North, which specialises in art commissions. She holds an MA in Philosophy from the University of Milan and one in Contemporary Art theory from Goldsmiths College in London.