Radical Space: Loved2Death by Christian Guerematchi (2025)

Loved2Death is an ongoing artistic research project by choreographer Christian Guerematchi, in which he reflects on the fine line between cherishing and suffocating within interracial relationships. Drawing on his personal experiences as a child of colour in Slovenia, Guerematchi unravels the complexity of cultural erasure, the coldness of exclusion and the so-called double consciousness.

During a residency at MGLC (International Centre for Graphic Arts) in Ljubljana, Guerematchi was inspired by the book On Cuddling – Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace by researcher Phanuel Antwi. He went in search of a connecting factor between the white and Black parts of his identity and found it in animism. Animism is based on the idea that everything is animated, that the spirit is present in everything. It is a philosophy of life rooted in both Slavic and Central African cultures.

To be held and erased at the same time... Choreographer Christian Guerematchi, born from both Central-African and Slovene heritage, moves along the delicate thread between tenderness and suffocation.. recognizing our experiences where double consciousness shapes and the proximity to whiteness wounds, and forms.

Instead of opposing both lineages, he looks for the spiritual roots they share: animism, nature-based worldviews that once lived in Slovenia as fully as in Central Africa, before both places were forced into the West’s idea of “civilization.”

At The Bookshop at ITA, Christian invites the ancestors to the room. And he asks is... What happens when we truly recognize all the ghosts in our foundations?