Turakella Editha Gyindo

TESTIMONIALS OF THE BODY
TURAKELLA EDITHA GYINDO

PARIS
17 SEPTEMBER TO 22 NOVEMBER

Invited by Fondation H for a research and creation residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, Turakella Editha Gyindo is developing the project Testimonials for the body, presented at the parisian space of Fondation H from 17 September 2025.

The project explores the connections between bodies through the loofah sponge — a plant-based material used to clean the body, objects, and domestic spaces. In Tanzania, her home country, the loofah also holds symbolic significance as part of cleansing and care rituals. Turakella combines loofah with pumice stone — both natural, abrasive materials traditionally associated with care — to evoke stories linked to the body, especially Black bodies. Using rough, abrasive materials to speak of care reflects a tension: that of healing marked by pain. This Paris residency allows her to expand her research across other cultural contexts, weaving links between communities through everyday objects. The installation, unfolding across both floors of the parisian space of Fondation H, becomes a site for storytelling, connection, and healing.

Christelle Bakima Poundza has been invited by Fondation H to write the exhibition text for Testimonials for the body.
A critic and author of Corps Noirs (Les Insolentes, 2023), Christelle Bakima Poundza held a conversation with the artist on the occasion of the exhibition opening.

Exhibition text written by Christelle Bakima Poundza, translated from French

“I want to conclude with the significance of community. What we are doing here isn’t just a one-night event. It’s proof that our dreams can take shape, even succinctly. It is a mark. And every mark counts. We are planting a seed in this hard but rich soil, that is our future.”‍

In conclusion of her opening speech at Afro-Feminist Archive Center, Safya Fierce1, rising star of French entertainment, subtly but truthfully highlights the power of community in today’s societies: space and bonds that bring great comfort and are a promise of glorious futures. How to continue seeing beauty in things, despite violence, isolation and erasure?

By « building community ».

For Turakella Editha Gyindo, “building community” is much more than just a hackneyed saying. It is an art form. It is her art form. Far from the marketing exploitation of a term that is increasingly being stripped of its core substance, the artist, originally from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, takes the community as her artistic gesture’s starting point and guiding thread. “I started creating to regain a feeling of belonging when I was studying in Algeria. I was far from home and far from the community I grew up with.”

Meshing physical installations, videos, paintings, and performances, Testimonials from the Body, the visual artist and curator's first solo show in Paris, is the product of a three-month residency in partnership with the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. The exhibition explores the body care rituals of the community in which she was raised, through decolonial practices using madodoki – woven polypropylene plastic bags, mawe ya kusugulia miguu – pumice stones, and loofah sponges. Originally from tropical and subtropical regions, luffa is a plant belonging to the Cucurbitaceae family. It is mainly farmed in Asia and Africa, and particularly in Tanzania's coastal regions of Dodoma and Iringa, where the artist is from. Once dried, its fruit can be used to make a vegetable sponge that has many functions.

In her artistic approach, materials such as loofah are not simply utility items used to clean bodies, surfaces, or objects. Rather, their impact is twofold and significant. They function as archives, genuine memories of a time, of communities, and of cultures that once existed. They carry both individual and collective stories that continue to shape the present, despite the turmoil brought by colonization and the forced industrialization that followed. They also offer an exceptional mean to gather the community of women who watched her grow up and with whom she collaborates to produce her entirely handmade works of art. “With luffa, going from growing the plant to transforming it into an artwork takes several months, which gives us time to have authentic moments of listening, sharing, and exchange. That’s what I love most about my work.”

With Turakella Editha Gyindo, creation is far from being a solo experience. At the very core of her creative process resides a fierce desire to (re)build bonds within the community. Deep exchanges are nurtured, nourishing the transmission of knowledge and rituals between women from one generation to the next. Spread over time, this process allows her not only to explain the motivations behind her practice to an audience unfamiliar with the field of arts and culture, but also to discover and better understand the experiences that have shaped and continue to build these women, guardians of memories and priceless artisanal skills.

Her research on the concepts of hygiene and cleanliness, through pre-colonial materials and objects intended for body care, have also enabled her to tackle the spiritual dimension and emotional burden they carry, as well as the subject of female beauty standards. Her artworks constitute an essential questioning of the use of manufactured products from the West, which are now perceived by local populations as “more scientifically advanced” than those used by their ancestors. “People don't realize that these products weaken us more than they heal us. Unlike the care products and rituals that have been used for generations, they are not connected to the Earth and nature, which prevents any deep connection with one's inner spirituality, as well as with the communities from which we descend and the memories from which we inherit.”

Indeed, while there is no doubt about the intensity of the violence that colonialism inflicted on bodies and societies, a sometimes forgotten but very concrete aspect of this endeavour is highlighted here. In Tanzania—whose current name comes from the first syllable of “Tanganyika” and the first syllable of “Zanzibar,” the names of the two countries that merged to form the actual state on April 26, 1964—as in other formerly colonized territories, this violence initially took the form of a widespread policy disqualifying the products and rituals used by indigenous cultures, later followed by the promotion of colonial-style hygiene. The development of colonial hygiene played an important role in the organization of daily life in the colonies, reflecting to logics of economic efficiency and market opportunities for manufactured goods from the West. Through the broadcasting of propaganda speeches and images, the colonial authorities enforced hygiene standards on the colonised population that were patterned on their own, leading to a loss of landmarks and a cultural denial. This still leads them today to elevate Western products and aesthetic norms as more desirable.

Placed on the floor or hung on the wall, Turakella Editha Gyindo's installations are large canvases made from luffa sponges, madodoki, and mawe ya kusugulia miguu, creating shades of beige, brown, gold, and sometimes red and aqua green, as a reference to the color palettes found in nature. Whether connected by thin, visible glass fibers or woven together invisibly, the materials used create original compositions that highlight the interdependence and uniqueness of each element of the whole, whilst also composing a reflection on community. The cut-outs and fragmentations present in certain artworks seem to echo to missing narratives that the artist seeks to complete.

The ensemble is supplemented by a series of figurative portrait paintings and a video - performance, in which the artist is shown taking care of a white plastic mannequin’s body using a loofah sponge.

While the first addition illustrates the importance of the collaborative aspect in the artist's practice, the second allows her to express the full tangibility of her intimate connection with the loofah sponge.

By inviting us to touch the artworks with our own hands, Turakella Editha Gyindo catches us off guard. As her work points to the loofah and pumice stone’s healing properties, the tactile experience prompts us to question our beliefs: How can products considered “good” for the body as a physical and spiritual vessel be abrasive? How can products manufactured with such pleasant smells and textures be so damaging to the body and soul? This call to “touch” (re)connects us to memories and stories rooted in our bodies, where they have left their mark. “I see it as a way of connecting all the bodies that have ever touched loofah and thus archiving that moment forever in the installation itself.”

Testimonials from the Body takes us on a spiritual and oneiric journey, both individual and collective. Conceived by the artist as a ritual of care, healing, and transformation of the body and mind, the exhibition invites us to question the social, historical, and colonial structures that shape our intimate connection with both body and spirituality. Most importantly, it challenges us to actively explore the history that connects each of us to a “community of fates,” creating a sense of belonging and a profound sense of the “us” that it empowers us to build our freedom and shape our dreams.

BIOGRAPHY OF TURAKELLA EDITHA GYINDO

Turakella Editha Gyindo (Turakella) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. After completing her university studies in Algeria, she joined the Nafasi Art Space Academy in Dar es Salaam in 2021 to pursue the Curatorial Practice and Art Management program and participated in the 2021 East African Biennale.

Since then, Turakella has worked as an independent curator in Tanzania, organizing numerous exhibitions and artist residency projects, including with Mazi Arts and the Goethe-Institut in Dar es Salaam. In May 2024, she became part of the Mentorship Program for East African Curators, supported by the Njabala Foundation, Independent Curators International, and AWARE.

Inspired by human nature and its adaptation to the perpetual and frenetic evolution of the world, she challenges collective preconceptions surrounding intersectionality, identity, and belonging. She is interested by the challenges and complexities of human existence, as well as how identity can transcend social norms. According to her People’s place in society is not only shaped by personal experiences but also by a profound connection to existence that goes beyond physical embodiment.

In early 2024, she presented her first solo exhibition, Mwanangu Kua Nikutume, at the Alliance Française in Dar es Salaam. From painting to performance, Turakella experiments with a plurality of media, through which her work explores her experiences of femininity, isolation, emotions, and personal memories. Her personal history serves as a central thread in her practice, as she draws from her own memories to weave connections with emotions that resonate universally.

Through her work, Turakella seeks to initiate a dialogue about the social and hierarchical norms that govern communities, highlighting the diversity of questions that arise in the quest for identity.