The Colonizer’s Trash

Artist and scholar Stephanie Kimou presents The Colonizer’s Trash, her debut performance-lecture and social practice activation. Here, Kimou envisions an expanded definition of trash—one that considers mindsets, ideologies, and material excesses rooted in colonial legacies such as anti-Blackness and exploitation. In alignment with Kimou’s broader practices which contend with the toxic residues of colonialism, this emergent work invites participants to take stock: what’s mine and what is not?

Through this performance and exercise in communal reflection, The Colonizer’s Trash will introduce and contextualize Kimou’s self-published zine of the same name. Attendees may bring belongings that symbolize colonial paradigms to be gathered, categorized, repurposed or discarded during the activation. Drawing inspiration from artist Howardena Pindell’s seminal video work Free, White, and 21 (1980) and writer and artist Jenny Odell’s material archive The Bureau of Suspended Objects (2015), Kimou will transform the gallery into a space of decolonization, reclamation, and reckoning. 

RSVP is recommended due to limited capacity. This program was selected from Hamiltonian Artists open call, which invites artists, organizers, and cultural workers to present professional presentations in our U Street gallery space.

ABOUT THE ARTIST–ORGANIZER

Stephanie Kimou is an equity strategist, writer, and lecturer working to make the NGO and philanthropic sectors more equitable and accessible for Black women, femmes, and gender-expansive folks. She has a decade-long career in African development and now supports philanthropic institutions in defining decolonization and implementing next-generation equity initiatives.

An aspiring Buddhist, cannabis enthusiast, and yogi, Stephanie resides in Washington, DC, with her family.