"reinKarnatorX"
The grave that holds waters holds lives...
Curating such an abandoned and a silent space evokes the spirits and energy of “reincarnated bodies” and the dynamics of “embodied materialities”. It is an inquiry into the intersectionality of lives before, then, now and soon as an attempt to revive the relationship between humans, objects, and forgotten spaces. Nevertheless, the exhibition and its conceptual frameworks collided with our current conditions of isolation, silence, alienation, intimacy and our memories of past and present while reimagining the future of humanity, cultures and social relations.
"reinKarnatorX" as inspired by the Ghanaian traditions, life and philosophical beliefs in reincarnation, brings together 3 "conspiring artists” whose curiosities explore the notion of regenerative abilities of objects, aliens and human bodies. In other words, their works seek to reexamine the convergence of electronic ghosts, cyborgs, bio and intimate materials while unveiling multiple layers of transitions, rebirth, life and death within human and nonhumans spaces.
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Though the individual artists journey through a series of experimental research, adventurous investigations and the politics of materialities, their collaboration seeks to synchronise these works into "mutual organism" and a multilayered environment. Their works erects a hybrid Museum without walls by creating new imaginations for both audience and participants. They are carefully entwined in each other to take over the space and reclaim its potency and fertility, as they repurpose cyber materials, dead electronic objects, stained fabrics, human bodies, sounds and spaces into matrices. While Percy Nii Nortey freezes the transporters by enveloping abandoned cars and highly inflammable automobiles with his "stained-dyed" dirty oil soaked fabrics, Mawuenya Amudzi seems to be ushering the audience into an artificial world or "cyber heavens" via discarded cathode ray television exposing us to liminality of the world within whereas martin toloku lays in state transitioning and transporting us into the cosmos. The kind of web created suggests an endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth but not necessarily to provide answers to our dreams, imaginations or any preexisting conditions. Instead is an attempt to "lure" the audience into contemplating on the complexities of our existence. The exhibition will last for 31-days allowing the everyday audiences new experiences each time they will revisit the space and the works.
Curatorial statement: Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT)
Participating Artists:
If you missed the opening on the 7th of August, you still have the chance to experience the works...
reinKarnatorX is open to the general public FREE until September 7th 2020.
For online view please contact and book for zoom live-streaming appointment
Email: reinkarnatorx@gmail.com
or call/WhatsApp
+233 54 747 7830
+233 20 069 9419
+233 50 136 8901
Meet the 3 "conspiring artists” whose curiosities explore the notion of regenerative abilities of objects, aliens and human bodies...
Mawuenya Amudzi
Mawuenya Amudzi is a multidisciplinary artist based in Kumasi, Ghana. Amudzi has been interested in objects and the potential lives they possess long after they have outlived their “ordained functions”. He builds installations with decommissioned electronic gadgets like cathode ray tube (CRT) television sets, to explore their materiality. Mawuenya investigates and explores emerging narratives from such objects within our ever changing contemporary society. His works cut across installation, sculpture, sound, video and experimental performances.
Amudzi has participated in group exhibitions including Orderly Disorderly organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Accra, Ghana, the inaugural Lagos Biennial dubbed Living on the Edge, Spectacles Speculations, Kumasi, Memory and Amnesia: In the presence of absent futures, Kumasi, the 9th Chale Wote Festival, Accra and series of exhibitions by perfocraZe International Artist Residency.
Percy Nii Nortey
Born in 1993, in Kumasi, Ghana, Percy Nii Nortey is an artist who lives and works in Kumasi and Accra. His practice revolves around the interest in materiality, identity, labour and memory of material objects in relation to human activities. Percy seeks to blur the lines between performative objects, sound installation, moving sculptures and video installation. He completed his Bachelor’s Degree in fine art (Painting) from the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Kumasi. Percy has exhibited in several group exhibitions including Cornfields in Accra, 2016 and Orderly Disorderly 2017, both at the Ghana Museum of Science and Technology, Accra, Pidgin Imaginarium at ChaleWote Street Art Festival 2019 in JamesTown, Accra. He had his first solo exhibition titled Poetics of Material Memory in Accra, 2019 at Brazil House, Accra
Martin Toloku
Martin Toloku is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice evolved over the years from carving to installation, performance, video work, studio practice and collaboration with animals specifically termites and aquatic species. He is fascinated about the deterioration of materials, and the memories they inhabited primarily decaying objects such as wood, animals, plants and so on by nature and ‘predators’. Collecting from water bodies and the immediate environment Martin assembles dead woods and carcasses into spectacular objects and poetic compositions. In his studio he is assisted by a host of termites as collaborators feeding his collection of woods as labour and sculpting. He seeks to explore spontaneity as revolutionary aesthetics, experimental inquiries while investigating decay in relation to time, space, life and death, and. the relationship between living things and objects.
In his performances, Martin uses his body as a material object in a processing and confronting his own childhood experience and relationship to death and its manifestations in his sculptural installations.
Statements by Participating Artists:
MINYAGBETE (Let Keep Wake )
A call of emergency for all humanity as there is a shift in time, a moment to reflect, contemplate and journey to the unknown. It is about time we take a break with a deep breath in a relaxing mood to think and reflect on one subject which we can never do away with in life (death) as it is our next encounter separated by time. Do you imagine which world and experience you have just immersed yourself in? The encounter of our everyday life is engraved as unforgettable scars. Trapped in these seats of memories and histories to guide us in our journey leading us in meditation to the next experience of life yet to be discovered individually. On your seat take a personal ride emotionally on your thoughts guided by the echoing car seats following your past experience in relation to your present moment to anticipate your future.
Performance inspired by the concept of wake keeping, the act of paying respect to our diseased and traditional rituals performed to mortal bodies. Re-appropriating the ritual performed to people who died fatal death ( car accident, murder) as considered bad death. That their souls will not be at rest but haunt back if a ritual is not performed to console them. Connecting these concepts with the mechanic shop which serves as a healing space for broken down vehicles also a moment of evoking memories in a space of survival. An installation of car seats collected from car owners and mechanic shops with my body wrapped in white cloth resting on a floating raft (intimate voyage).
Title: Out of Sight, (2020)
Mawuenya Amudzi's installation is a site specific work that looks at how people relate with everyday objects and what could become of these objects. The CRT screens are refashioned into a gate which metaphorically represents a portal as a connector. This idea of portal is borrowed from futuristic concepts explored in science fiction movies (technology, time travel, extraterrestrial life etc. ) which portrays the notion of an advanced and more civilized life than humanity. This portal becomes a transitioning/time travel/reflective period in accessing new lives and new forms of objects. Some of the screens are left unaltered to leave the audience to create their own imaginations and to contemplate on the image formation on the screens. The question then becomes what does one consider an image? While some altered through alchemical processes and constructed into ‘Sperm heads’ . These ‘Sperm heads’ are attached to a truck head metaphorically inquiring into the popular media with information and it’s globalized influences in our present-day-society.
Transporter 31500 by Percy Nii Nortey
Transporter focuses on objects after being regarded as worthless and disused but having the possibility to reincarnate and take new identities through human interventions. The exhibition space is metaphorically seen as a hospital where sick vehicles are admitted, diagnosed, and are treated (repaired). Such a live saving space was later abandoned together with some dead vehicles.
Transporter(31500) inquires into the relations of dead vehicles after going through artistic interventions such as wrapping and creating proxies for damaged parts with dirty coloured fabrics to unmute the vehicles and give them new forms of identity. The installation generates an environment that allows the audience to question what they think or know and rethink about identity, materiality, object reincarnation, and memory. It also peels back our understanding of the fact that objects have their own narrative which places crucial importance on the precise material which they are made; their historic and social reason of being, and also have the ability to reincarnate when dead. Stage-like scenery activities are composed ironically, displaying the everyday functions of the vehicles and creating their own narrative of the space through moving sculptures, sound, and light installation, which allow the audience to interact with the works through their senses.
reinKarnatorx artist Statement
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