September 14, 2023 |
From now, until Februray 11 at the Barbican Centre, Julianknxx is staging his first institutional solo exhibition at The Curve gallery – an increasingly reputable show space that’s been home to some of London’s most compelling contemporary art exhibitions – and online on WePresent – WeTransfer’s art-centric sister platform. Dubbed, Chorus in Rememory of Flight, it’s a cinematic display offering insight into themes of inheritance, loss and belonging, using the written word, music and visual art to explore cultural and artistic intersections. Within, the Sierra Leonean poet, artist and filmmaker uses his personal history to dismantle hegemonic perspectives on African history, art and culture and to bring awareness to the African diaspora.
Immersed yourself in a multi-screen installation tracing Julianknxx’s travels across Europe where he collaborated with choirs from disparate Black communities; city to city, chorale to chorale. By tapping into the practice of active listening, he collected the performances, testimonies and contexts of these groups to create a poignant series of films contemplating the concept of “choral song as a means of resistance to the eradication of difference”. Inspired by the words of French philosopher Édouard Glissant, who said, “You can change the Other while being yourself, you are not one, you are multiple, and you are yourself,” the artist sets out to reframe how we construct both local and global narratives, meanwhile reflecting on the experience of existing in liminal spaces.
Shot everywhere from Hamburg, Berlin and Rotterdam to Amsterdam, Antwerp and Marseille as well as Barcelona, London and Lisbon, the whole of the video traverses an extraordinary 4000 kilometres, reflecting the vast distances navigated by those interviewed and their ancestors. A single statement – “We are what’s left of us” – reverberates from frame to frame, binding choral voices together and speaking to the ways in which music can be a vital vessel for the survival of cultural memory. It’s been integral to how humans have told stories for millennia, but Julianknxx’s films offer new angles on what it means to be entangled in a mosaic of ancestral memories. He uses the choir as a metaphor for community, riffing on the writings of scholars including Paule Marshall (Praisesong for the Widow, 1983) and Lorna McDaniel (Praisesongs in Rememory of Flight, 1998).
The Curve exhibition comes to and end with a distinct space for reflection and reading, drawing attention to the utter significance of listening – really listening – and engaging with uncomfortable concepts integral to cultural identities and the evolution of humankind.
Photography courtesy of the Barbican Centre. ‘Chorus in Rememory of Flight’ is on view at The Curve, Barbican Centre from September 14, 2023 – February 11, 2024 and will be available for viewing online at WePresent. Admission is free.
