Title: When Colours Speak
Author: Katai Mutale
Genre: Flash Fiction
Date written: 20 April 2024
Place written: Amaka Lodge
If colours had voices, what would they sound like? If we could mould them like clay into a personified beauty, what would they be? We don’t think about this often, but colours do…more than we can imagine. Colours have their own world. We think of them as tools. We define our lives by them. But they’re more than equipment, branding, and paintings. They have personality, excitement, and a reason to celebrate. I am aware that I sound delirious or deeply poetic. I honestly prefer the latter. But spending time with Grey one wet afternoon in a park inverted my gaze to see that there’s more than what meets the eye.
When our daily buzzing is hushed as the sky turns from happy blue to inky black, the colors convene. All shades, with the most saturated taking the lead, meet and greet, hug and kiss, listen and play. However, the night before I met Grey was a special night. It was The Hue Convention. In a room of their choice, the three generations of Colours march through the conference room in formation, led by their Founders: Red, Blue, and Yellow. The Colours’ national anthem proudly trumpets through the speakers as they form into neat rectangles. The seating arrangements stretch outwards in razor-perfection, like the rays of a sketch of a half-risen sun. They stop at a particular point and encircle a tiny round stage.
The Founders are the first to take their seats, followed by the next Generation, the Secondaries, ending with the Tertiaries. Each section march is led by the highly saturated; the faintest of tints sit at the back. In the Colour world, order is beauty. Where there is chaos, there seems to be no Colour. We thought we invented this organization, but it turns out that it was the Colours educating us the entire time. Each Hue Convention has one purpose: to celebrate the voice of Colour. For so long, humans defined what Colours were, but Colours wanted each other to remember what they were before we spoke to them.
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Mama always taught Grey that when light shines on grey, it becomes silver. It made her squirm. She was not silver. She’s a proud Grey tint. Always had been and always will be. But Mama refuted her protest and firmly repeated her statement. The sentence wafted in Grey’s memory as she ventured to her destiny: unexpectedly interrupting the Convention ceremony to give her toast. Each step she took quaked the stage, but the audience of colours remained frozen in anticipation. Their icy stance seemed to grip Grey’s stride and she found herself stuck just like them. The spotlights that traced her as helicopters would in a car chase followed suit.
However, the heat of the moment thawed her fearful pause. Mama’s saying was finally put into perspective: The spotlight didn’t diminish her value—it enhanced it. She was born for the stage. Grey faced the podium and marched resolutely. In seconds, the mic stood square in her face. Her only applause came from the white noise of the fans—the blade type of fans. But it was perfect. There was no competition to hearing what Grey sounded like again.
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iMPAC Workshop: Writing About Space With Anna Zgambo
Katai Mutale wrote this text for The Critical Language of Intervention, an exhibition curated by Banji Chona in partnership with the Women’s History Museum and Open Window University.
Title: The Forest
Author: Musonda Mukuka
Genre: Hybrid
Date written: 20 April 2024
Place written: Amaka Lodge
Even the wind howls sometimes, like the steam set to simmer from a pot a decade later than expected. Out past the glass of the window stained with nothing but feeling. Out past the full bassinet smeared with nothing but loss. Out past the whine of the back door the forest tends to whimper.
Dig up the pavers. Embrace the earthy scent of fossils underneath. Let it cleanse you of the stale cement that reeked of civility. Start off. Start slow. With your hair, wild, dangling off the back of a chair. Its legs claimed by vines. Its purpose undeterred by mildew. Swing your legs for coolness until you grow accustomed to the heat of the sun. Until you even begin to crave her.
Go rough. Let her see your face. Let her heal you with burning. Her rays like kisses long awaited. Arch your neck to meet her. Let your body follow. The one the world taught to warm an infant but never itself. Head held high, let your feet now meet the grass. Its dew expectant. Feel the coolness of its tingle. The way it falls to embrace you. Let your fingers linger in the greenness that even the weeds abandoned.
Let your lips long against the edges of a tree trunk that even fire as bold as your lips couldn’t burn. That age strengthened and beautified. That gave shade to women like you who thrived not so long ago. In this place where your thoughts can rustle like leaves. In this place where comfort falls like rain. In the howl of the forest, in the soul of yourself, go there and stay.
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iMPAC Workshop: Writing About Space With Anna Zgambo
Musonda Mukuka wrote this text for The Critical Language of Intervention, an exhibition curated by Banji Chona in partnership with the Women’s History Museum and Open Window University.