Resistance as art and life, transcending all disciplines, intergenerational, collective, based on kinship relationships instead of work hierarchies – what the artist group Family Connection has been practicing for years is singular. Now they are coming to Berlin and are presenting their new work at Ballhaus Naunynstraße for its premiere: GUTS: Glenda’s Unique Travel Stories.

At the center is Glenda Martinus, a Caribbean artist and part of the collective, and her eventful life. Employed as an office worker in the 1970s and 1980s, she recognized the necessity of engaging in labor rights advocacy – after all, Caribbean women had led labor struggles since enslavement. Thanks to a scholarship program – developed by the revolutionary choreographer, dancer, and scholar Rex Nettleford at the Women and Development Unit (WAND) of the University of the West Indies and funded within the framework of the UN Decade for Women – she had the opportunity to travel back and forth between various Caribbean islands and participate in political workshops. This story of feminist Black liberation work, serves as a catalyst for Family Connection, to reflect on forms of learning beyond institutions, on solidarity, and on the collective nature of the struggle.

With GUTS: Glenda’s Unique Travel Stories, the Dutch-Caribbean collective Family Connection continues its own artistically-political journey, which began in 2005: Starting from the Black Radical Tradition, it aims – in deviation from colonial normalization – for a continuous expansion of historical narratives and its own possibilities for action.