A conversation about...Bling! (2025)

I don't usually share all the moderating or panel conversations I do, but this one felt special. Programmer Merlijn Geurts of de Balie in Amsterdam, invited me to moderate a conversation in context of the theatre show Bling! by Buhle Ngaba. Scroll down to see the full conversation.

Buhle Ngaba is a multi-award winning South African actor, writer and theatre activist. Her research and performance interests include developing new thought processes around the role of storytelling and creativity in unearthing and amplifying African women’s voices from the archive. Her most recent performance, Bling!, is about the largest uncut diamond on earth. The diamond is part of the crown worn by King Charles at his coronation in 2023. And of course, behind this magnificent stone, lies a complex colonial history.

The Cullinan was born and excavated in South Africa in 1905. Yet it was cut in Amsterdam and traded under pressure to the English royal family. Many South Africans want the Cullinan back. Actress Buhle Ngaba dreams of succeeding.

In the theatre performance Bling! Ngaba depicts the Cullinan’s journey home to South Africa. With a personification of the diamond, flickering images from the future and monologues from a court, she takes you from the early 19th century to today’s South Africa. She takes the audience into an alternative history and future. In the process, she seeks the answer to the question: by returning this diamond, can the UK heal all the scars of the past?

Joining me in this conversation is the amazing curator Hicham Khalidi. Hicham is the director of the Jan van Eyk Academy in Maastricht. From 2015 until 2018, he was associate curator at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris. He was also the curator of the group exhibition ACT II for the Sharjah Biennale in Beirut in 2017, cultural attaché of the Sydney Biennale in 2016 and chief curator of the Marrakech Biennale in 2014.

Hicham Khalidi was curator of the Dutch entry for the 2024 Venice Biennale, and worked together with Renzo Martens and the artist collective Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise(CATPC).

Khalidi is interested in the context and conditions related to contemporary art and art-institutional practice. In particular, Khalidi is interested in how climage change, the accumulation of crises and processes of colonialism affect this. He considers curatorship as working in service of an in coalition with other people.

The performance was curated and programmed by Afrovibes Festival!

Check out the full conversation, here: