Tiwani Contemporary presents Synchronicity II, curated by the collective On The Roof and in partnership with galerie baudoin lebon, Paris.
Synchronicity II presents work by artists from Africa and its diaspora that reflects contemporary creativity in a global context. Like the experience of synchronicity in psychoanalysis, their artistic practices capture the spirit of the moment: connected on the one hand, yet individual on the other. A version of facts in one place also has its principle of equivalence on the other side of the planet. In Swahili, duni ni mapishano means 'the world is made of differences', invoking a situation in which translations are not only possible but respectful of difference and specificities. Synchronicity II attempts to make visible these interdependencies as much as its independences, allowing for multiple readings in which limits are difficult to perceive. These issues are implicit in the work presented and rendered across a variety of media including photography, video installation and sound.
The nine artists exhibited are: Madagascar-born Malala Andrialavidrazana; Martinican Steeve Bauras; James Barnor, with photographic archives of post-independence Ghana; French-Ivoirian François-Xavier Gbré; Em'Kal from Cameroon; UK/Kenyan video artist Grace Ndiritu; Nigerian photographer Abraham Oghobase, Algerian Amina Menia; and Kapwani Kiwanga, presenting Tongue, a sound piece documenting a Swahili lesson between a brother and a sister.
Malala Andrialavidrazana’s Ny Any Aminay (2011) reveals people’s intimate spaces in Madagascar. James Barnor's extraordinary photographic archives (1950s-'70s) plunge us back to the post-independence era in Ghana, as well as to the multicultural London of the 1960s. Martinican Steeve Bauras integrates his black-and-white photographs into a three-dimensional construction, beyond P, Chile (2006-2009). François-Xavier Gbré utilises a formal and pictorial approach in the work Tracks (2010) which focusses on the imprint of time on architecture. In the form of parodies, Em'Kal's photographic series Rio dos Camarões (2009) and Grace Ndiritu’s video To Africanize Is to Civilize (2003) manipulate symbols of a colonial past. Kapwani Kiwanga presents Tongue (2007), a sound piece that documents a Swahili lesson between a brother and a sister. Unkempt monuments dedicated to martyrs and steles for political commemoration in Algerian public spaces are recorded with a dose of irony by Amina Menia in her installation Chrysanthemums (2010-2011). Ecstatic (2009-2010), Abraham Oghobase's performative photographic series, questions the place of an individual in a metropolis such as Lagos.
Part one of the Synchronicity series, Synchronicity I was co-curated by Elise Atangana, Nathalie Belayche, Yves Chatap and Caroline Hancock at the galerie baudoin lebon, Paris (2011) in conjunction with the Photoquai Biennale.