Associationxamxam - African Digital Perspectives

Wangechi Mutu, Primary Syphilitic Ulcers of the Cervix, 2005

« J'appelle Chaos-monde le choc actuel de tant de cultures qui s'embrasent, se repoussent, disparaissent, subsistent pourtant, s'endorment ou se transforment, lentement ou à vitesse foudroyante : ces éclats, ces éclatements dont nous n'avons pas commencé de saisir le principe ni l'économie et dont nous ne pouvons pas prévoir l'emportement. Le Tout-Monde, qui est totalisant, n'est pas (pour nous) total. Et j'appelle Poétique de la Relation ce possible de l'imaginaire qui nous porte à concevoir la globalité insaisissable d’un tel chaos-monde. »

Edouard Glissant. Traité du Tout-Monde, Paris, Gallimard, 1997.

 Photographer Cristina de Middel’s Intoxicating Blend of Truth and Fiction

A re-working of the eponymous T.Rex glam rock anthem into an isiXhosa protest song. The track was rearranged in collaboration with composer and choir leader Bongani Magatyana, and is here presented in speaker cabinets visually quoting the Intonarumori noise-generating machines of the...

Paris, 18 octobre 2013, 13.00, les lycéens sont dans la rue pour protester contre la stratégie du gouvernement qui consiste à spectaculariser les reconduites à la frontière des immigrés continuant ainsi fragiliser les plus vulnérables.

Kara Walker,  The Crossing, 2017

“The day of the Inauguration, Kara Walker, a painter and installation artist, couldn’t turn on the news; she started painting. The result is a monumental, nine-by-twelve-foot work, alluding to Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 Washington Crossing the Delaware.” 

Shamans using sites like Facebook for black magic, says Malaysian official

A communications officer with a government ministry has reportedly warned people against posting pictures of themselves on social media, lest they be used in black magic rituals.

Wangechi Mutu and Her Post Human Kenyan Mutants by Edgar Arceneaux

Edgar Arceneaux: I did have a third category of how I see you using materials, which is synthetics, be it hair, mylar, sheets of vinyls that look like wood. These are things that have the qualities of being natural but are actually made with machines. Blurring the lines between organic and synthetic imbues your backgrounds with additional associations to concepts of science fiction. When we talked about particles, bleeds, and strains of interactions in your art materials, these are also the same fear-inducing qualities of the antagonist in much of science fiction, fantasy and horror genres films today. Dispersions of airborne viruses producing zombies or wiping out of society with an incurable disease, or on the genetic level, dealing with bio-technology, genetic manipulation, mutation, genetically altered foods and the cloning of human beings. All cause radical restructuring and conflict within both the human body, as well as the societal body. In most Hollywood films, disfigurement is treated as something to be suppressed, pushed back into the shadows, but in your work, you use it as a means to dispel illusions. In spite of that, your work is very seductive to so many people, could you talk about why you think that is?

Wangechi Mutu: I don't even know what people are actually seeing, I can only see through my eyes, or how it feels to be making it, or what if feels like to see these characters created in their environments. I do know that I have a deep fascination in what is considered to be "not-normal," what is considered to be the quintessential look where an ethnicity is considered to be normal. Who came up with and why? What is the purpose of coming up with those delineations and categories? In many ways I see it as a thread running through my work. I see it in pinups, in female insects to cyborgs, everything has this question of beauty, appearance, perception, our claim to understand a person's history and their intentions is based on appearance. That is why I play with this notion of what draws you in, what gives you a sense of comfort, gives you a set of codes that allows you to judge this person. "Oh, I know this person, they're morally in the right place," and I can therefore allow them in. As a non-American, as someone bureaucratically and officially alien, that term itself raises questions about what that means anyway. If you see any depictions of alien in Hollywood or mass media and apply it to yourself, there is inevitably going to be this disconnect or questioning. That's where some of those things come from.

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