Wednesday 14 January,18.30–20.00
A Public Reading, and Performance

The event will be held in English 

‘The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.’ These are the words of James Baldwin, published in The Paris Review in spring 1984. Baldwin’s articulation positions writing as an ongoing practice of self-confrontation: the uncovering of uncomfortable truths and the rupture of illusion, both personal and political.

During this event, we commune with his language—enunciating it, ruminating on it, and foraying into its afterlives. The evening opens with readings by Malmö-based poet and playwright Felicia Mulinari, and curator Tawanda Appiah, before unfolding into a performance, Traveling Light Suite, by Berlin-based poet and artist Logan February.

The Traveling Light Suite is a trio of poems (‘Traveling Light,’ ‘A Lover’s Question,’ ‘Death is Easy’) on the liminality of exile, recording an immaterial experience of voyage across borders of nation and nature, space and time, life and death. The suite responds, in part, to the poetics of James Baldwin and the works of Ethiopian composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou—a descendant of their questioning of the soul’s costly and courageous quest in foreign lands. 

This event takes place in dialogue with our current exhibition, Reading James Baldwin, curated by Tawanda Appiah, on view until 25 January.

Bios:
Logan February is a Nigerian poet and multidisciplinary artist whose work explores desire, psychospirituality, and Afro-queer identity. Their poetry collections include In The Nude (Ouida Poetry, 2019) and Mental Voodoo (Poesie Dekolonie/Engeler Verlag, 2024). Their short film, Thrall, was an official selection at the 2025 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. February received the Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature and recent fellowships from the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and Akademie der Künste, among others. Presently a poet-in-residence at the Humboldt Forum, Logan February lives in Berlin.

Felicia Mulinari is an author who lives in Malmö. She made her debut in 2019 with the critically acclaimed poetry suite Det som inte kan utplånas (That Which Cannot Be Erased). Her latest novel, Ackumulation av ursprung (Accumulation of origin), published by Bonniers in 2025, is a book about love and care with fascism and racism as conditions of life. 

The event is part of the Beautiful Experiments series, which is carried out with the support of Öppna Malmö, the City of Malmö.