A new book by artist Alessandra Ferrini, entitled Like Swarming Maggots: Confronting the Archive of Coloniality Across Italy and Libya with contributions from a number of artists and writers (including yours truly), has just been published by Berlin-based Archive Books.

Featuring Ferrini’s long-term research on the colonial and neo-colonial relations between Italy and Libya through a critical engagement with the Italian ‘archive of coloniality’ and its structural violence. The book includes documentation of Ferrini’s major project Gaddafi in Rome, whose last iteration is currently exhibited at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Adriano Pedrosa, as well as a series of works reflecting on positionality, censorship, and the erasure of the genocide perpetrated by the Italians in Libya.

Building on the artist’s interest in writing, translation, and collaboration as forms of resistance practice, it brings together different voices and visual materials, putting forward a reflection on the ethical dimension of cultural work. As a result, the book includes original contributions, reprints, and translations by writers, scholars, curators, and practitioners pivotal to the development of Ferrini’s work and thinking.

Like Swarming Maggots: Confronting the Archive of Coloniality Across Italy and Libya includes a preface by Bassam El Baroni and contributions by: Tewa Barnosa, Adam Benkato, NiccolòAcram Cappelletto, Chiara Cartuccia, Sarri Elfaitouri, Amalie Elfallah, Khaled Mattawa, Maaza Mengiste, Barbara Spadaro, Daphne Vitali.