There’s a gap, but the gap is not void, it is a place we live in. Not a transition. Not a pause. It’s now. Inhabiting the in-between feels like I am walking inside a question with no punctuation. And yet the body is resilient enough to wear the traces of strive, of thrive, of balance and imbalance all at once, on her skin.
My imprints are screaming for reflection, for witnessing.
I am the imprint of love.
I am the imprint of labor.
I am the imprint of trauma that never left the body.
I am the imprint of community. Of every friend, sister, elder, co-struggler, lover and stranger who reminded me that this, even in the in-between is worth living. Even when it feels like the imprint is all that should remain, and not the vessel still trying to imprint a future: of hope, of grace, of joy, of light.
How am I holding the certainty that who I was has led me to who I am? All while still holding the uncertainty of whether becoming is even an option. Whether a continuum is possible in the midst of grief so dense it screams: leave it all behind. Let go. Step into the uncertainty of the unknown, the deep dark and create a infinite past tense.
The vessel that does the imprinting is also the one that holds it all. The body that paints the image is here because she holds the imprint.
Because she knew I would need to see it later.
Because she trusted I would not be alone in seeing it but would be with my people. I choose to turn toward the in-between, not to analyze it, but to dwell in it. To press my ear against its dormant hum. Together. In this shared habitation of the in-between.
So here we are. Me, under this blue dark sky, blank yet blanketed by all that comes before me.
This spirit of inhabiting the in between carries through the works on view drawn from two defining moments in my practice. This exhibition gathers work from my New York solo debut Kobikisa at ISCP in 2022, and my open studios at Stephen Street Gallery, where I shared drawings, music, and gatherings through the evolving project A Deep Running Well of ____.
In Kobikisa, I reclaimed Black flesh as a site of tenderness and ancestral memory through clay body prints and counterclockwise rituals. A Deep Running Well of ____ deepened this search, transforming healing into a collective act of survival and love. This time, the depth emerged through a series of blue body prints on white paper, where I turned to water as a site of safety, joy and ancestral continuity.
Shades of blue evoke my ancestors’ oceanic embrace on my skin and their enduring presence across these tones, I trace a lineage from womb to lake to ocean, embracing the fluid resilience of Black life. Drawing from Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake and Saidiya Hartman’s poetics of the archive, the work seeks not only to witness the weight we carry, but to hold the possibility of soft landings, where I find fuel and anchors in the unsteady.
Here, the journey continues through new body prints created in: By a Thread, a 70-piece A4 grid series drawn from In Between, and a video work tracing my body printing process, intertwined with images of Lake Kivu—filmed during my return home to Eastern Congo in 2019. In it, my bare body becomes a vessel: filled with water, history, and memory. The lake moves across my skin, merging place and flesh—mapping a future inscribed in the body itself.
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Maliyamungu Gift Muhande is a Congolese artist and filmmaker based in New York