Veve Kunigundis was a ritual floor drawing made in collaboration with Roberto N. Peyre during documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany on June 17th 2022. Roberto and I performed the drawing as part of the opening ceremony for the Atis Rezistans – Ghetto Biennale part of the exhibition.

Veves are ritual diagrams drawn in powder during Haitian Vodou ceremonies that represent the cosmic signatures of the loa, the pantheon of Vodou spirits. Veve Kunigundis was designed to represent the patroness of the church in which Atis Rezistans and colleagues from the Ghetto Biennale were exhibiting. St Kunigundis – or Cunigunde of Luxembourg – was Empress of the Holy Roman Empire between 1014 and 1024. She was canonised in 1200. The church in Bettenhausen was completed in 1927 to serve the growing Roman Catholic community in Kassel. It was closed for renovations in 2019 when serious structural damage was found in the vaulted ceiling. Veve Kunigundis was based on an earlier work, Ponto for Banbha Mooira, adapted according to symbols associated with St Kunigundis.

The veve was drawn using quartz sand poured from glass bottles.

When the drawing was completed we created a candle-lined walkway between the alter and the veve in preparation for the second part of the ceremony; Jann Pase’l Pase & Mache Nap Mache (Walk the Walk and Talk the Talk), the re-creation of a work first made by Roberto in collaboration with Jean-Louis Huhta and Jean Claude Saintillus at the Ghetto Biennale in 2013.

Beginning with myself and Roberto, artists from Atis Rezistans, the Ghetto Biennale and audience members paraded along the ‘catwalk’ and danced on the veve until it was obliterated.

The Atis Rezistans-Ghetto Biennale exhibition, which Veve Kunigundis was created for, was awarded Exhibition of the Year 2022 by the German section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).

Here is the official video documentation of the event created by the documenta team.