| Maker | Christian Guerematchi |
| Duration | 45 min |
Experience a free work-in-progress and join the conversation with the creator.
Loved2Death
Radical Embrace
Performance artist Christian Guerematchi grew up in Slovenia as a child of color. In Open Studios we are invited into the development of his vibrant research project Loved2Death, in which he unravels—through text, dance, and video—the complexity of double consciousness, cultural expectations, and the coldness of exclusion.
During his residency at the MGLC in Ljubljana, Christian was deeply struck by Phanuel Antwi’s book On Cuddling – Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace. Within his own dual heritage, he discovered connections to animism—the philosophy that everything in the world carries a soul or spirit. Both Slavic and Central African traditions embrace this idea, yet in both cultures it was stripped away under the colonial guise of “civilization.”
L2D is a dance balancing between forces of care and constriction. Both personal and societal. Both historical and urgent
Christian Guerematchi is a Slovenia-born performer with a background in classical ballet, who now works in contemporary dance. His work is always artivistic and, as a queer person of color, he investigates the boundaries between Black and white, man and woman, East and West, North and South.
Since 2006 he has lived in the Netherlands, where he delves into the complexity, contradictions, and social consequences of identity and (de)colonialism, supported by theatre studies at the University of Amsterdam and training in Somatic Movement Coaching. In 2021 he received a two-year development grant from the Performing Arts Fund NL (Fonds Podiumkunsten). During this period he created the trilogy Epistemologies of the Body in collaboration with ICK Amsterdam, consisting of the solo NAM – Non Aligned Movement, the trio Hissy Fit (Echo Between Bodies), and the group performance FUNK (A Cosmic Horizon). At its heart lies the forgotten history of the Black body and Black European identity.
| Choreography/concept/performance | Christian Guerematchi |
| Creative producer | Jimmy-Pierre de Graaf |
| Coproduction | Stichting Kindvolk |
| Music | Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman & Julius Eastman |
| Visuals/scenography | Jeisson Drenth |
| Costume | Jacob Kok |
Korzo Studio