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Media: wood, clay, copper, oil, celluloid film, reclaimed human afro hair, human bodily fluids, antique bronze frames, linen, LED monitors, ash, handmade paper, and sequin fabric. Wall installation.
Hermafrodek (2015-2021) is a wall installation combining sculpture, video, digital painting, experimental sound, oral text, and imagery. The various media conjure up a pulsating visual and aural surface, in front of which the visitors may fall in a trance and become keenly aware of their otherness, as the protagonist of Franz Kafka's story The Cares of a Householder when suddenly confronted by the mysterious object Odradek. The complex, but seductive, objects that visitors confront in Hermafrodek include, first, a full-length painting I call Angry Angel/Yellow, the figure of a monocular angel with a clenched fist and cloaked in yellow; second, a group of wall-mounted monitors that feature a variety of moving images: a staged performance of female genital mutilation; two video paintings representing dwellers in the Land of the Twins, the magical kingdom of twins in Benin; a pair of watchers’ eyes; animated pronouncements streaming out of Celestina Simon’s mouth, Haiti’s black Joan of Arc; and a short film, re-enacting a conversation with my grandmother, a Vodou priestess from Benin herself, on telekinesis, or, the art of moving objects at a distance with the power of one's own mind only; third, several afroed hermaphrodite Vodou mobile sculptures representing Beninese goddesses of fertility, modeled in clay and suspended with reclaimed afro-hair within copper-lined wooden boxes; and finally, a series of framed afro-hair portraits and celluloid film strips embroidered with Afrofuturistic characters emblematic of resilience and defiance. To put it otherwise, Hermafrodek is a giant experiment in human telekinesis. It is rooted in the vision and practice of Afrofuturism and digital Vodounism and is a commentary on our human and post-human identity, and on the future of race and sexuality. It is an Afrobaroque work, as it embraces the visual excesses of the Baroque and the rapidly emerging shape of a Futurafrique, as envisioned first and boldly by M. B. Tolson. Hermafrodek transforms experiences of linguistic, geographical and social displacement into a multi-layered narrative that recounts my own story of isolation and exile, while aspiring to be a meditation on the very act of storytelling. |
