Even if you’re mouth is closed
(you are a mouthpiece)
Youmna Chlala
Allyn Gaestel
Maryam Kazeem
Yadichinma Ukoha-Kalu
April 19, 2018
This exhibition, which takes its title from Youmna Chlala's forthcoming book The Paper Camera offers an exploration of the visuality of text. A projection of Chlala's words blows in the wind, an imperfect monument to this story.
Allyn Gaestel's dream//life is a series exploring trauma as lived through magical realism, dissociation, and the physicality of emotion, shot in Goma, Montauk, Lagos, Guangzhou, Dakar, New York, Lomé, Long Beach, Berlin and Bauchi.
Maryam Kazeem presents according to hims, a work from the series how to be the ideal african woman. With this wall drawing Kazeem signifies sound: mschew mschew mschew mschew mschew--and its layers. An excerpt from the larger prose piece follows.
put on his eyes
now
open them
on command
when you look at yourself in the mirror.
never close them. even if--
have to hold you down
keep them open.
never close them.
Yadichinma Ukoha-Kalu drawings suggest a language that is both intimate and epic, as words become beckoning landscapes. The larger of these works, titled Script 1 and Script 2 form part of her Thought Lines series.
Even if your mouth is closed (you are a mouthpiece) invites you to consider the possibilities of the written, sonic and visual word in shaping narratives, translating experience, invoking sightscapes and retrieving elemental language and forms.