Hier ist sie: die letzte Ausgabe unserer komPOST-Reihe für das Jahr 2026, Nummer 60. Die künstlerischen Beiträge von Meryem Freitas Do Nascimento und MaxX kreisen um Themen des weiblichen Kampfes um Freiheit und körperliche Unversehrtheit. Hier werden Symbole des Widerstands rituell erarbeitet und öffentlich zelebriert, um gemeinsam stark zu werden und zu bleiben.
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Here it is: the last edition of our komPOST-series for the year 2026, number 60. The artistic works of Meryem Freitas Do Nascimento and MaxX circle around the topic of female struggles for freedom and bodily safety. Here, symbols of resistance are ritualistically constructed and publicly celebrated, to become stronger together, and stay that way.
Déranger / Disturbance
MaxX, 2019
glancing the sunlight
Meryem Freitas do Nascimento, 2026
glancing the sunlight
my grandmother paid
with pain between her
wide spread legs
climbed to grab
the figs life has offered
able to feed 10 kids
of nothing
and 10 more if needed
held her head highly as she
kept whispering spells
through stormy nights
spoiling her house
with the scent of opium
practising her soul
Déranger / Disturbance
Maxx, 2019
France, August 2019.
102 women had been assassinated since the beginning of that year. 102 femicides: women murdered out of sexism. Most of them had previously alerted the police on the dangers they faced, and pressed charges, several times.
Met with institutional indifference, feminists across tens of cities are assembling as the night falls. On paper they write all of those women’s names, and the violence that led to their death.
“Cherline, tied up in a burning house”
“Gaëlle, pregnant, stabbed by her ex”
“X, 92, beaten to death by her husband”
As the movement swells, other messages start to appear, women everywhere in France, and now abroad, are speaking out on the walls of their neighborhoods.
“My body my choices”
“We paste at night so that equity may see the light of day”
“We believe you”
For months, I passed on the method to new sisters-in-arms, paint, and paste every single night. And every next day, on my way to uni, or work, I would find most of our words silenced, torn apart by neighbours, passers-by, the city.
Our oppression was a disturbance to them.
I spent hours staring at the imprints of their finger nails virulently scratching the glued paper, the dick drawings on the stories of our traumas, our mothers’ ripped off domestic violence testimonies, and the names of our rapists censored.
“I don’t want to walk scared at night anymore”,
“Protect your kids”:
No message was safe from erasure.
And here it was.
The very violence we were calling out.
Standing on the remains of our persecution’s records, making sure no one would know about the deaths we were mourning.
“Neither forgetting nor forgiving”
So I documented it all.
Our refusal to lose ground as well.
Out of escalating rage, we kept on going back, to repair missing letters, and to paste new, longer messages.
We moved to spray paint so they knew silence was not an option anymore.
The movement never stopped.
“The revolution will be feminist”:
The revolution is.
| L | A | R | U | E | E | S | T | A | N | O | U | S |
The streets are ours
On my honor
Meryem Freitas do Nascimento, 2026
Beloved Reader,
In times of destruction and uncertainty,
remember this ritual.
Place a candle in front of you
and say profoundly
wherever you can:
On my honor
I will reserve a piece of sanity and one slice of insanity for whatever calls my destination.
I will make myself a complicity in the name of my gods. I will be called to brew freedom and I will drink from it anytime I want. I will share it and the recipe so that others can perceive themselves without the rattling noise of their pestle. I will not surrender to the form some people want of me, as their internalization does not comply with my desires. I am tender, I am sweet, I am bushy, lucious and deep. I am a full big piece of undefined, rewired, tenacious meat. I am a butch, I am femme. I am a dyke-minded them. I am the daylight’s and nighttime’s bestest friend. I am beloved by me and many more. I am the mourning of a winner, a mourning that came and stood and plaintively moved on. I am a present entity with wings that burn and dismantle your maladies. I am the ruler of my pride until the day I die arrives. I am the only person able to legitimately stand in defense of my woundedness.
I am the wind, the earth and soil. I am the wave greeting the shore. I am an ocean alive.
On my honor, I will rest.
To know that a world can end and begin on the same day,
it is only necessary to be.
The komPOST series presents monthly artistic submissions in a wide variety of media. The works are selected and combined by the editorial team of komplex–KULTURMAGAZIN.
If you also want to be part of komPOST, read our open call and submit your works.
BIOS
Meryem Freitas do Nascimento*
ist eine brasilianisch-kurdische Autorin, Künstlerin und Kulturwissenschaftlerin. Ihre Geschichten sprechen von Entwurzelung und Traumata sowie Räumen und Praktiken der Zugehörigkeit und Solidarität diasporischer Gemeinschaften.
Maxx ماكس
is a Franco-Egyptian activist, visual artist, and writer whose work delves into themes of intercultural identity, intersectional feminism, and alternative perspectives on love, intimacy, and spirituality.
