If you are in Stockholm and have yet to see the exhibitionTHE THRESHOLD IS A PRISM at Kulturhuset’s GALLERY 3, do so now. It closes in a couple of weeks. The closing weekend, 11-14th January, will also have a comprehensive themed program on Caring: for oneself, each other, and nature. I recently visited the show with my family.
The Threshold Is A Prism, Southnord’s debut exhibition at Kulturhuset, Stockholm, is one of the most moving exhibitions you will have seen. And I say this not only because the piece, Black Noise, by INA NIAN, literally messes with your feelings. More on that later.
Only a Fool Fights the Sun, RAFIKI
The exhibition brings together twenty international contemporary artists of the African diaspora, either originally from or active in the Nordic countries. It spans the gamut of media and techniques. I like group shows for their variety and ability to create an ebb and flow of interest and how works can unintentionally reflect or play off each other. What all the works here have in common is centering a kaleidoscope of blackness, whether in their person, ideas, heritage, culture, or experience. In investigating and exploding the notion of a threshold from a single edge into a multi-spectral prism, the show recalls the Senghorian philosophy of art from a distinctly African experience rooted in emotion. (Senghor as cultural critic, not as dictator). Every piece in the show called up a different sensation.
SOUTHNORD is the brainchild of multi-tasking artist, gallerist, and curator MARCIA HARVEY ISAKSSON. She identified an absence in the art world in the Nordics and went about filling it, starting in Stockholm. This exhibition represents the beginning of a planned future series featuring artists of color in different spaces in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
MARCIA HARVEY ISAKSSON. Photo Ylva Sundgren
We walked into the exhibition in Kulturhuset in the center of Stockholm and were riveted by SASHA HUBER’S eye-catching piece, The Sea of the Lost, in the shape of a boat reminiscent of both a slave ship on the Atlantic waves and the rudimentary vessels refugees are using to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. Made from around 200,000 staples, the sheer labor of shooting that many staples into board is impressive. Not to mention the artistry to conceive of staples as an art medium. FATIMA MOALLIM‘s Flyktinglandet (Refugee Country) and KHALID SHATTA‘s The Migration of the Soul also take on the refugee experience, relating personal stories in their work. Moallim in drawing and performance. Shatta in painting and finding peace through art practice. In They Walked on Water, UWA IDUOZEE honors the everyday life of immigrants who helped build Finland.
Foreground: 08-18 (Past Perfect), SANTIAGO MOSTYN. Background: Black Noise, INA NIAN. Photo Andrea Davis Kronlund
They Walked on Water, UWA IDUOZEE.
The video works KA, by DINA EL KAISEY FRIEMUTH, and Call Me by My Name, by video artist AHMED UMAR, slam poet GURO SIBEKO, and rapper MUSTI, take on the European art museum establishment.
DIANA AGUNBIADE-KOLAWOLE‘s Black Glow shows in varying light spectrums as an attempt at making an honest self-portrait. The almost celestial installation started as a performance on the show’s opening night, where the artist coated her body in photo chemicals to develop her form on light-sensitive panels. The resulting exposures are left unfixed and continue to react to light and change, as people do.
The images in the video and the accompanying audio commentary in Vague à l’âme (A Black Women Tale) take head-on the myth of the strong black woman. AMI WEICKAANE breaks apart a myth that, while sometimes empowering, is more often imprisoning and disregards the toll this expectation takes on the mental health of black women. We watched the video twice, and the installation behind traditional delicate lace curtains, with their harsh, somber words and imagery, was very effective and affecting.
Vague à l’âme (A Black Women Tale), AMI WEICKAANE. Photo Andrea Davis Kronlund
Halfway through the exhibition room, I felt an acute sense of discomfort and unease that I had noticed earlier but couldn’t identify. It turned out to be INA NIAN‘s Black Noise. My sister thought the piece was unnerving and visceral, not what she had expected! The sound work brilliantly uses low-frequency infrasound to create a physical manifestation of the invisible “violent silence” that causes anxiety many people of color feel when confronted with tropes of structural racism, like micro-aggression and gaslighting. While hardly heard, the piece resonates deeply in the body.
I’ve been fascinated by ISMAILA FATTY‘s textile sculptures since first encountering them nine years ago. Initiation uses traditional Gambian textile techniques in a grouping that recalls bodies in ritual, memories of which are steadily eroding. In their work, multi-disciplinary artists RAFIKI and MICHELLE EISTRUP also explore traditional practice, memory, and performance. In Only a Fool Fights the Sun and her New African series, Rafiki honors those who have gone before while refuting the Western anthropological gaze. Through Four Faces of the Sun, Dikenga, Eistrup seeks to address colonial amnesia by reconnecting the African Diaspora and the spaces they now inhabit to Bakongo cosmology and idealogy.
Foreground: Four Faces of the Sun, Dikenga, MICHELLE EISTRUP. Background: Initiation , ISMAILA FATTY. Photo Matilda Rahm
SANTIAGO MOSTYN‘s 08-18 (Past Perfect) is another of the photographic works that, like Agunbiade-Kolawole’s, develops over time and creates a space within a space by investigating change through light and the photographic processes. Photosensitized cyanotype paper lines a room and darkens from an original light green to deeper cyan-blue shades depending on the light quality coming in. Mounted on this wallpaper is a non-chronological timeline of photographs from places of significance to Mostyn. When eventually de-installated, the room and the work leave behind their traces on the paper.
A giant afro spinning on its axis presents an enormous challenge to impulse and self-control. Despite the Don’t Touch My Hair warning sign, JEANNETTE EHLERS‘ We’re Magic, We’re Real #2 begs to be touched while reminding us to take up space and recognize how black empowering movements have been real alternatives for changing the world.
JEANNETTE EHLERS unpacking We’re Magic, We’re Real #2. photo Matilda RahmThe Space Inside My Hand, GERMAIN NGOMA. photo Matilda Rahm
Moving from the global and the external to the internal, GERMAIN NGOMA‘s bronze castings of The Space Inside My Hand just might be my favorite piece.
THE THRESHOLD IS A PRISM moves from honoring the ancestors in renowned painter ERNEST MANCOBA‘s oil painting L’Ancêtre (Ancestor), which inspired master weaver JOSEPH NDLOVU‘s monumental tapestry in wool, through DYAMI RAFN ANDREWS‘ beautiful use of color and subtle brushwork paintings, to helping us get in tune and deal with our feelings, in CECILIA GERMAIN‘s Mama Yetunde’s Tea Room. Although my family and I got to the gallery too late this time to partake of Germain’s hand-blended custom teas, we appreciated the herbarium of Afro-diasporic flora as a space to sit and recover from the numerous sensations that surfaced in the exhibition.
from Mama Yetunde’s Tea Room, CECILIA GERMAIN. Photo Andrea Davis Kronlund
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS Ahmed Umar (Sudan/Norgway) Ami Weickaane (Senegal/France/Sweden) Cecilia Germain (Sweden/canada) Diana Agunbiade-Kolawole (Nigeria/Great Britain/Sweden) Dina El Kaisy Friemuth (Egypt/Germany/Denmark) Dyami Rafn Andrews (Iceland/USA) Ernest Mancoba tolkat av Joseph Ndlovu (South Africa/Denmark/France) Fatima Moallim (Somalia/Sweden) Germain Ngoma (Zimbabwe/Zambia/Norway) Guro Jabulisile Sibeko (Azania/Norway) Ina Nian (Gambia/Sweden) Ismaila Fatty (Gambia/Sweden) Jeannette Ehlers (Denmark/Trinidad) Khalid Shatta (Sudan/Norway) Michelle Eistrup (Jamaica/USA/Denmark) Musti (Somalia/Norway) Rafiki (Democratic Republic Congo/Norway) Santiago Mostyn (USA/Trinidad/Sweden) Sasha Huber (Haiti/Switzerland/Finland) Uwa Iduozee (Nigeria/Finland)
