Puppets are bodies outside the body. In this sense, they are always marginal, peripheral to the body that moves them. Historically, this has enabled them to express what the body cannot say and convey narratives that escape dominant discourses. In this edition, a small exhibition brings together two artists who use contemporary puppetry as a means of dissident storytelling.

Justice Kasongo Dibwe is a self-taught puppeteer and educator based in Lubumbashi. His moving sculpture Congo : traces, parcours et souvenirs is a puppet theatre made of plastic bags and clay that tells the story of extractivism in Congo from colonial times to the present. All figures are operated by a single crank, symbolising the pervasive power mechanism that has impoverished the land.

Taus Makhacheva, with Way of an Object, breathes life into three museum pieces from Dagestan—a painting by Russian artist V. M. Vasnetsov, a wooden salt shaker, and a wedding bracelet—endowing them with arms and legs and letting them discuss their role in Dagestan’s official history under Russian influence.

This exhibition ties in with several other festival projects by artists such as Wael Shawky and William Kentridge, tracing a compelling line of puppetry through the festival as a means of counter-history.