Three in the Field [Solo Exhbition at FILET Gallery, London]
Curated by Brenna Horrox
Sound by Ijeoma Uzokwu
Inherited ancestries met by curiosities,
crossed the Atlantic seas
and bore ‘new’ ethnicities.
Taking on queer momentum,
encountering each and (an)other's realities,
we translated old histories into online identities.
Giving rise to future modalities,
those who move forward,
danced rather than walked,
until they found their own kind of flow.
feel the energy, forget to follow the planned.
Three in the Field is a refusal to accept architecture as singular or stagnant. It is a recognition and a manifestation of the fluidity in which diasporic life has built into the spatial structures around us. Illustrated by a coming together of Issi Nanabeyin’s architectural, ancestral and digital practice to tell stories of and for the diaspora. The stories explore visual streams of representation that live within the contemporary experience and embodiment of ‘Black’ identities meeting ‘British’ ones. Focusing on the movement born out of a closeness within forgein spaces and distance from what you are told is home, there is a sense of learning, searching and being. It is in this in-between, that a third architectural reimagination starts to grow. The exhibition invites us to dream in rivers; celebrating translations, traversings and meeting points through curved bodies drawn dancing in graphite strokes. Through intertwining film, sculpture and drawings Issi Nanabeyin resists binaries and singularity for the creation of collective forms that feel familiar even if we have not encountered them before. The symbol three is ever present within the show; it is representative for the body in-between simultaneously holding together the meeting point of two, whilst also refraining them from becoming completely one.
Issi Nanabeyin has collaborated with the sound artist Ijeoma Uzoukwu to create the spatial soundscape ‘Ether’. Made of the sum of two parts, ‘05:08’ 2022 and ‘21:05’ 2022 with a distance third part ‘People Carry Place’ 2022 . The soundscape explores the sonic relationship between ‘Blackness’ and Metal, and the constant tinkering noise that carrys through it. From forced enclosures with the sound of metal bolts on ships to using the material to create new artifacts for people who have had so many stolen, Ijeoma Uzoukwu is thinking about production lines, where do they start, do they ever finish, are we using them or are we part of them. The sounds appear to be separated into highs and lows but something connects them as they travel towards each other to the center of the field. The three sounds are magnetic to each other, embracing a property of metal that is within us rather than only surrounding us.
+ THREE IN THE FIELD SCUPLTURE SERIES
Photographers: Thomas Edward Moen
Elliot Nash
Post-Edit : Issi Nanabeyin
Written by Brenna Horrox and Issi Nanabeyin.
