Reading with Echo : On Generosity
AWARE, Villa Marie Vassilieff,21 Avenue de Maine, 75015 Paris
27.06.2025 - 28.06.2025
French version
On the invitation by AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions, Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care imagined “Care as Methodology”, a series of events that aim to practice and reflect collectively on intersections of care and art. For the fourth and last event of this series, Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva presented their project Reading with Echo: On Generosity, a session that invited participants into a shared inquiry around care, tarot, and the poethics of generosity.
Rooted in their unique approach to reading, this deck emerges from poethical interpretations of poetry — especially the work of Ai Ogawa — and takes shape through tarot spreads, Reiki sessions, and intuitive inquiry. Rather than reimagining the Tarot in its conventional form, the Echo Tarot reconfigures its ethical foundations. It departs from the classical, linear arc of self-actualization — epitomized in traditional decks by the figure of the Magician — and instead proposes a layered, complex composition of meaning.
In this deck, the Empress becomes Generosity : not a static archetype, but a force that acknowledges existence as ongoing re- and de-composition. Meaning is not tethered to a single purpose or final outcome, but resides in the infinite — the continuous unfolding of what comes into and out of space and time.
To expand this exploration, Valentina and Denise invited participants to join a collective study of the Empress — and the image of Generosity she evokes.
This event is produced in collaboration with visual artist Petra Bauer, initiator of Feminism Art Maintenance (F.A.M).
The artist and philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva is the Samuel Rudin Professor in the Humanities at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at the University of New York. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), The Impagavel Divide (Workshop of Political Imagination and Living Commons, 2019) and Unpayable Debt (Stenberg / MIT Press, 2022). Her artwork includes the films Serpent Rain (2016), 4Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018) and Soot Breath / Corpus Infinitum (2020) in collaboration with Arjuna Neuman; and the relational artistic practices Poethical Readings and Sensing Salon, in collaboration with Valentina Desideri. She has performed shows and lectures in important artistic spaces, such as the Pompidou Centre (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London), MASP (São Paulo), Guggenheim (New York) and MoMa (New York). She also wrote for publications for major art events (Liverpool Biennale, 2017; São Paulo Biennale, 2016, 2023 Venice Biennale, 2017 and Documenta 14) and published in art spaces such as Canadian Art, Texte Zur Kunst and E-Flux.
Valentina Desideri is an artist and researcher at the Centre for Arts and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm) at the Royal Institute of Arts/HDK-Valand in Sweden. She trained in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre in London (2003–2006), later on did her MA in Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (2011–13), and now holds a PhD in Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2023).
She does Fake Therapy and Political Therapy, and is one of the co-organizes of Performing Arts Forum, an artist-run space in the north of France. She collaborates with Stefano Harney with whom she co-authored two texts, and with Denise Ferreira da Silva, with whom she developed the practice of Poethical Readings (2015), the project The Sensing Salon (2016), and lately Reading With Echo (2024), all still ongoing. She is a member of the online platform www.ehcho.org.
Petra Bauer is an artist and filmmaker based in Stockholm whose practice unfolds through long-term collaborations at the intersection of feminist politics, social movements, and the moving image. She approaches filmmaking not merely as representation but as a shared method—one that listens, questions, and builds solidarities across difference. Her work engages film as a space for collective inquiry, political memory, and the rehearsal of alternative forms of life. Bauer studied at the Malmö Art Academy and holds a PhD from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. She is currently a professor at Stockholm University of the Arts and has held a professorship in moving image at the Royal Institute of Art since 2016. Over the years, she has co-developed cinematic and pedagogical processes with grassroots networks—ranging from SCOT-PEP’s advocacy for sex workers’ rights in Scotland to feminist archives and women’s centres across Europe. These projects are shaped by a politics of listening, where storytelling becomes both a form of resistance and a practice of care. Her films and research have been presented at venues such as The Showroom, Collective, Fruitmarket, Tensta konsthall, the Venice Biennale, and Museo Reina Sofía, among others.
Photo credits :
Tawfiq Sediqi