of Materials and things – Curated by EXIT FRAME at Galerie Coucke, La Condition Publique
Press Release
In of Materials and things EXIT FRAME, a Ghanaian artist and curator collective, presents a selection of contemporary artists from Africa and its diasporas. Some are internationally acclaimed while others are being presented in France for the first time. The theme of the exhibition sets the tone for experimental approaches through an array of open-ended forms ranging from organic, synthetic, digital, virtual, relational, and aural technologies. The diversity of works attests to the poetic or aesthetic visions of points of view on the world that we can all relate to, beyond the ethnic and personal distances separating us. The works presented at La Condition Publique offer us a testimony, a method, an idea towards artistic freedom and responsibility. The exhibition aims to propose modes of engagement in today’s world that transcend the cultural or identitarian markers we have become accustomed to in order to explore the force of what is common to us all, humans and non-humans alike.
Curatorial Statement
of Materials and things displays a speculative array of artistic propositions which together form a constellation of variegated situations and encounters. The exhibition aligns with the spirit of experimentation, foregrounded in the multidisciplinary framework of Africa Season 2020-2021’s founding principles set by N’Goné Fall, to stage a cross-generational selection of artists who embody this spirit in their respective practices. Through this attitude of confronting and transgressing established formats in art, the artists in this show articulate their visions within a framework that is aimed at independence.
The central claim of the exhibition emanates from the concern that the plurality of visions displayed signify or point to the universality of art as such; that the particular prism of art of/from Africa becomes critically meaningful when looked at not in exception from those of the rest of the world but necessarily in relation to it. Whether this appears symbolically or through material manifestations, the ensemble of selected works exist as strategies, methods, or perhaps decoys, through which egalitarian aspirations are made to emerge. of Materials and things collocates organic, synthetic, virtual, relational, and aural technologies with works ranging from video, painting, sculpture, installation, sound, virtual and augmented reality, computer-generated imagery (animation), photography, design, and gaming. The showembraces the spirit of non-conformism and diversity which permits the possibility of opening up the scope of what is possible in terms of artistic expression, freedom, and responsibility in the 21st century.
Of Materials and things uses the post-industrial context of Roubaix as the beginning point to reflect on global issues related to ecology, culture, political economics, technology and science.
Participating artists:
Bianca Baldi (South Africa); Akwasi Afrane Bediako (Ghana); Simnikiwe Buhlungu (South Africa); Rehema Chachage (Tanzania); Cheick Diallo (Mali); Latifa Echakhch (Morocco); Issah Alhassan (Ghana); Gladys Kalichini (Zambia); Godelive Kabena Kasangati (D.R. Congo); Evans Mireku Kissi (Steloolive) (Ghana); Tegene Kunbi (Ethiopia); Yara Mekawei (Egypt); Agyeman Ossei ‘Dota’ (Ghana); Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson (Ghana).
EXIT FRAME collective is pleased to embark on this project which initiates its understanding of the world from an African perspective. We are equally excited to work in partnership with La Condition Publique to create a series of associated interventions at the Roubaix Headquarters on the basis of Africa2021’s founding principles, issues and pillars set by N’Gonè Fall. While we explore Africanness as a complex set of markers of identity, we complicate what it means to be African, at a time when the interconnectedness of our global realities is affirmed through technology, transnationalism and much more. We believe this moment bears potentials as well as consequences for our shared starting point which goes back to affirming egalitarian principles as the basis of any cultural and geopolitical relationship in our society. Within this framework, we are able to confront what makes us different so as to insist on our commons.
Download exhibition brochure with this link.
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