For École du soir in Shanghai, Christian Nyampeta co-convenes a "scriptorium" working group with local collaborators, the “flesh and ink (有身书)” collective, to translate a text by Senegalese philosopher Souleyman Bachir Diagne, “Penser de langue à langue” (Thinking from Language to Language), into Chinese. The scriptorium is a collective structure for the experiencing, writing and interpretation of texts, as well as films and music, related to modern and contemporary African thought and life practices. Promoting a discourse of openness, solutions are sought collectively for translation. More recently, observing how words may fail us, Nyampeta and his collaborators have sought new and other methods through lyricism and embodiment .

In Shanghai,  “flesh and ink” collective is convened by CHEN Yining, HUANG Shiyun, CAO Shuyun, YANG Ziyu, and ZHAO Yiren, and their scriptorium experiments with "embodied translation" as an everyday experience that resonates with the lived realities of diverse communities. Bringing together practitioners familiar with navigating social ruptures, they respond to the lingering violence of a colonial present through other sensual attentional modes and seek to foster new forms for "how to live together" through movement, performance, storytelling, and other creative expressions.

The “flesh and ink” collective will meet regularly throughout the exhibition period, while visitors are welcome to join public sessions of “Scriptorium: Whisper from the Skin” scheduled once per month. The first open session will be on 16 March. Another open session will take place on 13 April; and on 1 June, as the exhibition concludes, they will offer an overview of the scriptorium’s “translation process” that invites everyone to continue the project. Their hope is that this will inaugurate a fresh start in our collective endeavor of “thinking from language to language.”


In Chinese and English.

Free and open to the public.

Space is limited. Registration is required. To register, please click on the “Register” button on the left of this page or scan the QR code below. Participation in multiple sessions is encouraged. Please register at least three days, by 17:00, prior to the first session you would like to join. Confirmed registrations will be notified at least two days prior to the session.

On 13 April, Scriptorium: Whisper from the Skin session will be held in conjunction with the woodcut printmaking workshop, Provisional Artistic Studies. Please register separately for this workshop.


In conjunction with École du soir, an exhibition by Christian Nyampeta.

The exhibition École du soir and related events are presented as the fourth season of the ICA’s second artistic research program, Another Knowledge Is Possible (2021-24), exploring neglected and repressed ways of knowing and the complex politics of knowledge decolonization.