a short film exploring how Blackness is expressed and what it means to suppress that expression. It considers the complex interplay between the visual and the verbal in the articulation of the Black experience.

Drawing from her position as a Black Kenyan woman who recently arrived in Germany, Awori uses a simple filming format, a camera phone, to depict a complex topic.

How expressions and recognitions of Blackness are culturally situated: skin colour becomes differently meaningful in different places, and the language for its articulation frequently resists exact translation.

The film emphasises how Blackness should be unapologetically acknowledged and celebrated as a visual difference.

As an African entering a Western – and specifically German – context, Awori points to how Blackness is often not expressed verbally and is not even open for discussion.

Awori created this film with one central message in mind. Blackness is neither sensitive nor to be avoided; instead, it is and should be named and asserted, exactly to confront the ignorance and racism that so often underpins the suppression of the Black experience. 

In response, I am who I am is a defiant declaration of Blackness, of its unitary visibility at the same time as its multiplicity.