Reading List

Ligia Lewis’ practice is shaped by her engagement with a chorus of voices and multiple perspectives. The books listed here are floating across the exhibition spaces and invite you to linger and delve deeper into the ideas that resonate throughout her work.

Book selection: Nora-Swantje Almes, Julia Grosse, Ligia Lewis and Magnus Elias Rosengarten

A

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi (2025): Dream Count, Knopf
Adusei-Poku, Nana (2021): Taking Stakes in the Unknown: Tracing Post-Black Art, transcript Verlag
Aidoo, Ama Ata (1993): Changes: A Love Story, Feminist Press at The City University of New York
Aydemir, Fatma; Yaghoobifarah, Hengame (Hg.) (2019): Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum, Ullstein fünf
Ayim, May (1986): Farbe bekennen [Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out], Orlanda Frauenverlag

B

Baldwin, James (1956): Giovanni’s Room, Dial Press
Bell, Derrick (1993): Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, Basic Books
Bell, Julia (2020): Radical Attention, Peninsula Press
Bellacasa, MarÍa Puig de la (2017): Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds, University of Minnesota Press
Bennett, Brit (2020): The Vanishing Half, Dialogue Books
Berlin Postkolonial, Each One Teach One, Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland, Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin (2025): Dekoloniale: Erinnerungskultur in der Stadt / Memory Culture in the City, Falschrum Books
Bernasconi, Robert; Mann, Anika Maaza (2005): The Contradictions of Racism: Locke, Slavery and the Two Treatises. In: Valls, Andrew (eds.): Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy
of Bingen, Hildegard (1900): Scivias: Classics of Western Spirituality, Paulist Press
Bishop, Claire (2024): Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today, Verso Books
Del Boca, Angelo (1969): The Ethiopian War 1935-41, The University of Chicago Press
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903): The Souls of Black Folk, A. C. McClurg & Co.
Borja-Villel, Manuel; Menezes, Hélio; Kilomba, Grada; Lima, Diana (eds.) (2022): choreographies of the impossible, catalogue of the 35th Bienal de São Paulo
Bourdieu, Pierre (1979): La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, MINUIT
Boyle, T.C. (1981): Water Music, Little, Brown and Company
Bradley, Rizvana; Ferreira da Silva, Denise (2021): Four Theses on Aesthetics. In: e-flux Journal, Issue #120
Brand, Dionne; Sharpe, Christina (2022): Nomenclature, Duke University Press
Bridle, James (2022): Ways of Being, Penguin Books
Brown, Jericho (2019): The Tradition, Copper Canyon Press
Butler, Judith (2004): Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, Verso Books
Butler, Octavia (1993): Parable of the Sower, Four Walls Eight Windows

C

Callaloo (2010): ETHIOPIA: Literature, Art and Culture, Vol. 33, A Special Issue, Johns Hopkins University Press
Campt, Tina M. (2021): A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See, MIT Press
Carson, Anne (2025): The Gender of Sound, Silver Press
Coates, Ta-Nehisi (2015): Between the World and Me, Spiegel & Grau
Cohan, William D. (2018): Why Wall Street Matters, Allen Lane
Cole, Teju (2011): Open City, Random House
Condé, Maryse (1995): Crossing the Mangrove, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1996): Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, The New Press
Crimp, Douglas (2016): Before Pictures, The University of Chicago Press

D

Davis, Angela (1990): Class, Women, Culture and Politics, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Diamond, Jared (1997): Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, W. W. Norton & Company
D’Olea, Dixa Ramirez (2019): Political Concepts: Indolence. On the occasion of the Political Concept-Initiative conference.
Dumas, Alexandre (1844, 1846): Le Comte de Monte-Cristo [The Count of Monte Christo]. In: Le Journal des débats

E

Eggers, Maureen Maisha; Kilomba, Grada; Piesche, Peggy; Arndt, Susan (eds.) (2005): Mythen, Masken und Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland, Unrast Verlag
El-Tayeb, Fatima (2025): Racialized Otherness in Post-Cold War Europe. Translated by Elisabeth Lauffer, MNG University Press
Ellison, Ralph (1952): The Invisible Man, Cambridge University Press
English, Darby (2019): To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror, Yale University Press
Enszer, Julia R. (2016): The Complete Works of Pat Parker, ‎Sinister Wisdom
Enwezor, Okwui; Gupta, Atreyee (eds.) (2025): Postwar Revisited. A Global Art History, Duke University Press
Enwezor, Okwui (2025): Selected Writings, Volume 1: Toward a New African Art Discourse. Edited by Terry Smith, Duke University Press
Enwezor, Okwui (2025): Selected Writings, Volume 2: Curating the Postcolonial Condition. Edited by Terry Smith, Duke University Press
Eribon, Didier (2009): Retour à Reims [Returning to Reims], Flammarion

F

Farah, Hamishi (2020): Airport Love Theme, Book Works
Fanon, Frantz (1952): Peau noire, masques blancs [Black Skin, White Masks], Éditions du Seuil
Ferrer, Ada (2014): Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, Cambridge University Press
Fietzek, Gerti; Ander, Heike; Rottner, Nadja; Enwezor, Okwui (eds.) (2002): documenta11, catalogue, Hatje Cantz Verlag
Finsh, Aisha (2014): What Looks Like A Revolution: Enslaved Women and the Gendered Terrain of Slave Insurgencies in Cuba 1843–1844. In: Journal of Women’s History, Volume 26, Number 1, The Johns Hopkins University Press
Fisher, Gary (1996): Gary In Your Pocket: Stories and Notebooks of Gary Fisher. Edited by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Duke University Press
Fisher, Mark (2013): Kapitalistischer Realismus ohne Alternative?, VSA: Verlag Hamburg

G

Gaines, Malik (2017): Nina Simone’s Quadruple Consciousness. In: Gaines, Malik: Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible, NYU Press
Gibba, Lamin Leroy (2024): Doppeltreppe zum Wald. In: Clerc, Anaïs; Gibba, Lamin Leroy; Nolte, Jakob; Sommerfeldt, Lisa; Wertheimer, Guido; Wyss, Leonie Lorena (eds.): Dramatische Rundschau 06, FISCHER Taschenbuch
Gikandi, Simon (2011): Slavery and the Culture of Taste, Princeton University Press
Gilroy, Paul (1993): The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Harvard University Press
Glissant, Édouard (1990): Poétique de la relation [Poetics of Relation], Gallimard
Götting, Michael (2015): Contrapunctus, Unrast Verlag
Golden, Thelma (1994): Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, Whitney Museum of Art
Gombrich, E. H. (1950): The Story of Art, Phaidon
González, Jonathan (2025): Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars, Ugly Duckling Presse
Graeber, David (2011): Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Gildan Media
Grosse, Julia; aus dem Moore, Elke; Mutumba, Yvette (Hgg.) (2017): I am built inside you, C& Magazine

H

Halifu, Osumare (2007): The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop. Power Moves, Palgrave Macmillan
Hall, Rebecca (2022): Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, Simon & Shuster
Hartman, Saidiya (1997): Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, Oxford University Press
Hartman, Saidiya (2008): Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Hartman, Saidiya (2020): The Plot of Her Undoing. In: Notes on Feminism: Saidiya Hartman, Feminist Art Coalition
Hartman, Saidiya (2020): Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals, W. W. Norton & Company
Hemphill, Essex (2025): Love is a Dangerous Word. Edited by John Keene and Robert F. Reid-Pharr, New Directions Publishing Corporation
Hemphill, Essex (2025): Essex Hemphill: Take care of your blessings. Edited by Camille Brown, The Phillips Collection
Henry, Paget (2000): Caliban’s Reason. Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Routledge
Hersey, Tricia (2022): Rest is Resistance: Free Yourself from Grind Culture and Reclaim Your Life, Aster
Hooks, Bell (1994): Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge

I

J

Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman (2016): Sense of things. In: Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 2
Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman (2020): Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World, NYU Press
Jacobs, Harriet (1861): Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself, Thayer & Eldridge
Jones, Daniel Alexander; Gumbs, Alexis Pauline (2021): Particle and Wave: A Conversation, 53rd State Press

K

Kafka, Franz (1915): Die Verwandlung [The Metamorphosis], Kurt Wolff Verlag
Kelley, Robin D. G. (2002): Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Beacon Press
Kelly, Natasha A. (2019): Millis Erwachen / Milli’s Awakening, Orlanda
Kelly, Natasha A. (2023): Deutsch. Weiblich. Schwarz: Warum Feminismus mehr als Geschlechtergerechtigkeit fordern muss, Piper
Khani, Behzad Karim (2024): Als wir Schwäne waren, Hanser Berlin
Khelil, Farah (2023): Effet de Serre [Greenhouse Effect], Les presses du reel
Kilomba, Grada (2008): Plantation Memories: Episodes of Everyday Racism, Unrast Verlag
Kimmerer, Robin Wall (2015): Braiding Seagrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions
Kincaid, Jamaica (2020): A Small Place, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Kohn, Eduardo (2013): How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human, University of California Press
Kouoh, Koyo (2013): Condition Report: Symposium on Building Art Institutions in Africa, Hatje Cantz Verlag

L

Lawson, Shayla (2018): I think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean, Saturnalia Books
Lax, Thomas J. (2016): Ralph Lemon: Modern Dance, The Museum of Modern Art
Louis, Édouard (2018): Qui a tué mon père [Who killed my father], Éditions du Seuil
De Lorenzi, James (2025): Feasting on History: Ethiopia and the Orientalists, Columbia University Press

M

Malaquais, Dominique; Khouri, Nicole (2016): Afrique-Asie. Arts, espaces, pratique, Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre
do Mar Castro Varela, María; Dhawan, Nikita (2005): Postkoloniale Theorie: Eine kritische Einführung, Transcript
McLaughlin, Rosanna (2025): Against Morality, transversal texts
Mengiste, Maaza; Ginwala, Natasha (2023): Rewriting History as a Chorus: Maaza Mengiste and Natasha Ginwala in Conversation. In: Gropius Bau Journal
Mengiste, Maaza (2019): The Shadow King, Norton & Company
Mercer, Kobena (1994): Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, Routledge
Morrison, Toni (1992): Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Harvard University Press
Morton, Timothy (2013): Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, University of Minnesota Press
Moten, Fred (2003): In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, University of Minnesota Press
Moten, Fred; Harvey, Stefano (2013): The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, Minor Compositions
Muñoz, José Esteban (2019): Cruising Utopia, 10th Anniversary Edition: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, NYU Press

N

Nash, Jennifer C. (2014): The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography, Duke University Press
Nash, Mark (2016): Red Africa: Affective Communities and the Cold War, Black Dog Publishing
Ndikung, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng (2025): In a While or Two We Will Find the Tone: Essays and Proposals, Curatorial Concepts and Critiques, Archive Books
Ndikung, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng; Hillgärtner, Jule; Kaczmarek, Nele (eds.) (2021): THE FACULTY OF SENSING – Thinking With, Through, and by Anton Wilhelm Amo, Kunstverein Braunschweig and Mousse Publishing
N’Sondé, Wilfried (2021): Femme du ciel et des tempêtes, Actes Sud
Nyong’o, Tavia (2025): Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World, University of California Press

O

Oforiatta Ayim, Nana (2019): The God Child, Bloomsbury UK
Oliveros, Pauline (2022): Quantum Listening, Silver Press
Otoo, Sharon Dodua (2021): Adas Raum [Ada’s Room], S. Fischer Verlag
Ovid (2009): Metamorphoses. A new translation by A. D. Melville. Edited by E. J. Kennedy, Oxford University Press

P

Phillips, Rasheedah (2025): Dismantling the Master’s Clock: On Race, Space, and Time, AK Press
Piper, Adrian (2018): Escape to Berlin: A Travel Memoir, APRA Foundation Berlin
Pitts, Johny (2019): Afropean: Notes from Black Europe, Penguin Books
Poupeye, Veerle (1998): Caribbean Art, Thames & Hudson

Q

R

Regaya, Nour; Al-Dujaili, Dalia (2023): An Archive of Love, Middle East Archive
Reid-Pharr, Robert (1999): Conjugal Union: The Body, The House, and the Black American, Oxford University Press
Ribeiro, Djamila; Kisukidi, Nadia Yala (2021): Dialogue transatlantique: Perspectives de la pensée féministe noire et des diasporas africaines, Anacaona
Roig, Emilia (2021): Why We Matter: Das Ende Der Unterdrückung, Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag
Rolnik, Suely (2023): Spheres of Insurrection: Notes on Decolonizing the Unconscious, Polity Press
Ross, Fran (2019): Oreo. Translated into German by Pieke Biermann, dtv Verlag
Russel, Legacy (2020): Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, Verso

S

Saar, Felwine (2019): Afrotopia. Translated by Drew S. Burk and Sarah Jones-Boardman, University of Minnesota Press
Sahebi, Gilda (2025): Verbinden statt spalten: Eine Antwort auf die Politik der Polarisierung, S. Fischer
Salle, Grégory (2022): Superyachts: Luxe, calme et écocide, Éditions Amsterdam
Schulze, Frederik; Wolfesberger, Philipp (2025): Dekoloniale Theorien zur Einführung, Junius Verlag
Scott, David (2018): Preface: Evil Beyond Repair. In: Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Vol. 22(1), Duke University Press
Scott, David (1998): The Re-Enchantment of Humanism: An Interview with Sylvia Wynter. In: Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Vol. 4(2), Duke University Press
Sehgal, Melanie; Wilkie, Alex (eds.) (2024): More-Than-Human Aesthetics: Venturing Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature, Bristol University Press
Shames, Stephen; Huggings, Ericka (2022): Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party, ACC Art Books
Sharpe, Christina (2016): In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Duke University Press
Sherwood. Marika (2021): Claudia Jones: A Life in Exile, Radical Black Women Series, Vol. 1, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd
SHOWstudio (2022): Lookbook: TELFAR A/W 22
Smith, Zadie (2016): Swing Time, Hamish Hamilton
Spillers, Hortense (1987): Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book, Rutgers University Press
Spillers, Hortense (2003): Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, University of Chicago Press
Stelling, Anke (2020): Schäfchen im Trockenen [Higher Ground], Verbrecher Verlag
Stephens, Michelle Ann (2014): Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis, and the Black Male Performer, Duke University Press

T

Tarkovsky, Andrej (2009): Die versiegelte Zeit: Gedanken zur Kunst, zur Ästhetik und Poetik des Films, Alexander Verlag
Thiam, Awa (2024): La parole aux négresses, Éditions Divergences
wa Thiang’o, Ngugi (2011): Globaletics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing, Global University Press
Transforming Solidarities (eds.) (2025): Solidaritäten transformieren: Praktiken und Infrastrukturen in der Migrationsgesellschaft, adocs
Turnheim, Max (2025): The Use of Space, éditions HKP

U

V

Varatharajah, Sinthujan (2022): an alle orte, die hinter uns liegen, hanserblau
Vazquez, Alexandra T. (2022): The Florida Room, Duke University Press
Vergès, Françoise (2019): Un féminisme décolonial [A Decolonial Feminism], La Fabrique
Antonio Viego, Antonio (2007): Dead Subjects: Toward a Politics of Loss in Latino Studies, Duke University Press
Vogel, Shane (2009): Scene Of Harlem Cabaret, Race, Sexuality, Performance, The University of Chicago Press

W

Wainaina, Binyavanga (2022): How to Write about Africa, Hamish Hamilton
Webster, Jamieson (2025): On Breathing: Care in a Time of Catastrophe, Catapult
Weheliye, Alexander Ghedi (2005): Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity, Duke University Press
Weheliye, Alexander Ghedi (2014): Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human, Duke University Press
Welchman, Jennifer (1995): Locke on Slavery and Inalienable Rights, Cambridge University Press
Wellershaus, Elisabeth (2023): Wo die Fremde beginnt, Verlag C.H. Beck
Wenzel, Olivia (2022): 1000 Serpentinen Angst, FISCHER Taschenbuch
West, Cornel (1993): Race Matters, Beacon Press
Whitson, Sage Ni’Ja (2025): Transtraterrestrial: Dark Matter and Black Divinities, Wesleyan University Press
Willis, Deborah (2000): Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present, W. W. Norton & Company
Willis, Deborah (2021): The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, NYU Press
Wittstock, Uwe (2024): Marseille 1940: Die große Flucht der Literatur, C.H. Beck
Wood, Catherina (2022): Performance in Contemporary Art: A History and Celebration, Tate Publishing
Woodard, Vincent (2014): The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture, NYU Press
Wudtke, Ina (2023): Black Studium: A Tribute to Fasia Jansen, Hilarius Gilges & Joseph Ekwe Bilé, Eigenverlag
Wynter, Sylvia (2003): Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument, Michigan State University Press

X

Y

Yusoff, Kathryne (2018): A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, University of Minnesota Press