Presence of a Fundamental Absence

This work was commissioned by the Penn Museum of University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA  to accompany the redesign of the Africa Galleries in a 10-year exhibition that opened in November 2019.  This installation reads as an aesthetic echo that adds contemporary visual input as a conversation with the traditional objects on display. It is a contribution to the process of redesigning the collective mental space concerning Africa in general.  The irregular pattern this work carves out evokes an abstract map with different continents. Like the life of traditional African objects and artifacts, movement, displacement, circulation, itinerary and re-appropriation all resonate with the shape of the world map as a field work.  The use of old objects found in Africa (iron, bones, ceramics, writings…) are juxtaposed to those new, used and reused in reference to a constantly changing Africa and  its diaspora.

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In creating this work, we wish to emphasize the relationship between the objects we have brought over featured in our installation and the objects that are on display inside the cases at the museum.  The overpowering size of the work is an effort in a sense, to heal the pain of those objects trapped behind the glass.  Its placement emphasizes the connection between past and present. In producing a conglomeration of objects representing life in Africa today, we are reflecting the absence of those objects that have been taken away (stolen) from Africa, which in turn has resulted, as a result of colonization,(and its outcome:capitalism), in the presence of the objects we see now (today).  The objects of this installation represent the life, activity and energy that remain in Africa (and its Diaspora) as a result of the absence of those lost and powerful objects (behind cases). Those objects that once lived on the Continent during a time when Africa was freely expressing itself without any influence from the West. After colonization and its outcome: capitalism, this conglomeration represents the results; the presence of the fundamental absence.