Dandara Maia

Exhibitions & Projects
  1. YES WE CAN - ARTE Premiere  
  2. Linden-Museum Digital 
  3. Floating Assemblies
  4. Not Yet
  5. Osun on the moon
  6. WAXATLAS Exhibition
  7. Mapping Ankara

Publications 

About


I am a transdisciplinary researcher and curator, navigating the intersections of material culture, visual anthropology, and fashion studies. My doctoral research at the University of Bayreuth's Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence critically examines the cultural narratives embedded in wax print textiles, focusing on their materiality and African identity. Operating between Brazil and Nigeria, I investigate how these hybrid fabrics serve as carriers of Africanness despite their colonial history. I engage with identity, decoloniality, and the tensions between the modernity framework in the postcolonial contexts of Nigeria and Brazil. With a foundation in fashion design and visual arts, my work at the Iwalewahaus Museum and in curatorial practice seeks to challenge and reframe the discourse surrounding African material culture, contributing to dialogues on decolonization and critical fashion theory.

As an Afro-Brazilian, I grew up in Rio and relocated to Germany in 2019, where I am based today, to pursue my academic career. Apart from being a researcher and curator, I am the mother of little Vicente.

Ulm, Germany

CV
Contact
dandara.maia[at]uni-bayreuth.de
danda.rrra
dandaramaia

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Floating Assemblies



Iwalewahaus 2023

Curatorial team  Eight exhibition areas show how collections move.
Collections are on the move.
They have ups and downs, ebbs and flows.
They create knowledge and new
forms and reflect networks of relationships.

Works, stories and people come together and separate again. Works of art come and go. They move in and out of collections. Some take their own path, traveling between museums and returning to their original context and their rightful owners.

In this exhibition, movements in the collections of the Iwalewahaus are followed. Familiar artworks and new stories come together, and the unexpected comes to the surface. In nine exhibition sections, visitors can allow themselves to be carried along by these movements. The room entitled “Beauty” exhibited the recent acquisitions of Iwalewahaus concerning the theme.

Collecting at Iwalewahaus reflects and embraces the multiplicity of aesthetics on the African continent and the inseparability of art and life. In this room, we examined symbolic representations of beauty, including dresses and hairstyles, as well as visual depictions of beauty in sculpture and painting. These works reveal deep connections to spirit, community, ancestors, nature, and the human experience as a whole. The dresses and fabrics in this room were collected in the context of my Ph.D. research about wax prints.







 
Photographs: Dandara Maia



Photo: © Iwalewahaus