The New Planetary Tapestry
On Otobong Nkanga’s Carved to Flow
Texts by Emanuele Coccia, Helon Habila, Sandrine Honliasso, Otobong Nkanga, Maya Tounta
In October 2023, Otobong Nkanga and Emanuele Coccia entered into dialogue at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp during the ARTICULATE / ECOSYSTEMS research festival. They had not met before the summer of 2023, yet their concerns were already in resonance with each other. Their conversation moved quickly away from any stable definitions.
In assembling this publication, the editors wanted not only to document this exchange, but also to further expand and deepen Carved to Flow, one of Nkanga’s long-term, situated research projects. Initiated in the context of documenta14, Carved to Flow began with a bar of cold-process soap and has since unfolded across multiple geographies and formats: laboratory, workshop, warehouse, performance, foundation, farm, art space, and public programme.
This publication reactivates texts by Maya Tounta, Sandrine Honliasso and Helon Habila, each of whom approaches the project from a different angle – from its material core and its position within Nkanga’s broader practice to the ethical shift the project itself has enacted.
The conversation Germination Reseeding Back into the Communities between Nkanga and Coccia, transcribed for this publication, forms its living core. Coccia’s philosophical essay The New Planetary Tapestry, newly commissioned as a follow-up to their exchange, deepens and expands strands that surfaced in their dialogue.
Published within the context of the Expanding Academy Publication Series edited by Nico Dockx and Judith Wielander at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.
2026
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