Unlimited II | 15 Jun - 12 Aug 2023

Gallery 1957 is pleased to present UNLIMITED II. The first edition of UNLIMITED in 2022 showcased works which grappled with a creative humanisation of locality and this sentiment continues down an adjacent path through the bounds and ties that bind in UNLIMITED II. The second iteration of this monumental group exhibition revisits the 1,400-square-metre unfinished industrial space and invites its participants to create site-specific works in strong dialogue with the space. The show is curated by Gallery 1957’s founding director, Marwan Zakhem, gathering artists into a multi-layered dialogue which whispers from the the immaterial world and explores consequences in the physical world. All of their practices share a sense of time produced by people working together through persistent metaphors of the ancient and the contemporary.

The exhibition brings together a constellation of artists from the continent and the diaspora to narrate their worldviews through different mediums such as painting, sculpture and installation. UNLIMITED II also touches on the use of fabric and photographic arts as mediums which amplify the personal, the political and collective experiences.

Exhibiting artists include: Kofi Agorsor, Hawa Awanle Ayiboro, Rita Mawuena Benissan, Derrick Ofosu Boateng, Tiffanie Delune, Godfried Donkor, Priscilla Kennedy, Abdoulaye Konate, Langlands & Bell, Turiya Magadlela, Famakan Magassa, Kaloki Nyamai, Joshua Oheneba-Takyi, Yaw Owusu, Caleb Kwarteng Prah, Afia Prempeh, Daniel Arnan Quarshie, Moses Sumney, Adjei Tawiah and Arthur Timothy.

The power of the eye to naturalise slow-growth transpires through the artistic voice of Kofi Agorsor. Emerging in the luminous space of awakening, Agorsor’s installations of tropical wood sculptures invoke a conversation which transcends the spiritual and the physical worlds. There will be a concurrent solo show of Agorsor’s works in Gallery III curated by Robin Beth Riskin and a musical performance by Agorsor at the opening reception of UNLIMITED II at 8pm. Agorsor navigates his African mythology and the art of performance, exploring his shape shifting position within and beyond established frameworks. The mixed-media artist has been crafting the sculptures featured in his new body of work for over a decade.

Yielding a time that makes visible an oscillation between tradition and modernity, are the semi-abstract works on display in UNLIMITED II. Through their creative mediations and productive processes, a number of these artists’ mix history with memory and desire. Out of many, an artist concerned with memories of the past is Daniel Quarshie. Deploying unstable points of identification that piece together fragments of memories, Quarshie negotiates feelings of grief, healing, spiritual presence and the space between these sentimentalities. Also navigating through memories and spiritual dreamscapes is self-taught mixed-media artist Tiffanie Delune. The artist of French, Belgo-Congolese heritage imbues kaleidoscope mixed-media works with brilliant colours which reflect her inner world.

Using styles akin to semi-abstract, through their works these artists and others in the exhibition reveal the links between the past and the indispensable future through a language of ambivalence that is versatile and indulgent of mediums. Photographic arts feature adjacently in UNLIMTED II, as seen in the works of Caleb Kwarteng Prah and Derrick Ofosu Boateng. These artists deploy the camera as a tool to focus on the visual poetry of everyday life in Africa. These striking interrogations of the idea of ‘Africanness’ are representative of a contemporary photographic practice which hones in on questions of identity and freedom.

Ben Langlands & Nikki Bell have conducted extensive research into Ghana’s historic European-built coastal architecture, working in a range of mediums and in collaboration with local artisans. Langlands & Bell present a series of sculpture and appliqué works in UNLIMTED II, some featuring the ground plans of the historic forts which bear similarity with Adinkra symbols - a traditional Akan visual language used extensively in Ghanaian fabrics and pottery. The London-born artists have produced creative structures which reflect concrete evidence of the relationships that existed between West Africa, Europe and the Americas over a period of almost four centuries.

A number of artists in the exhibition are unravelling the seams of traditional African artisanship and the attendant technological advancements of the modern material world. These notions and negotiations are made tangible through the mediums of textiles and fabric. Pulling on the threads of intersectional feminist discourse are the artists Turiya Magadlela and Priscilla Kennedy, working with materials that are carry visceral connotations across their respective African societies and cultural points of departure. Using materials and narratives that centralise the Black female body is a common denominator between Magadlela and Kennedy, including nylon pantyhose and kente, which the artists’ implement as a vehicle of subversion to explore possibilities of liberation. Kennedy was the recipient of the second edition of the Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize in 2022 and her practice explores fictional histories of objects and life forms.

Expanding on the physicality of fabric as a medium in UNLIMTED II are the tapestries of Abdoulaye Konate. The artist’s large-scale textile installations are permeated with dyeing methods indigenous to his native Mali and they are further interlaced with the spiritual desire to reconsider and uncover the crux of human suffering. Konate’s colourful metaphors of time are preoccupied with the tenable relationship between conflict and globalisation, demonstrating the quality of textiles to communicate beyond their material existence.

Reimagining the kaleidoscope totality of African culture is an overriding theme in this monumental group show, as seen in the works of Rita Mawuena Benissan who reinterprets the Ghanaian royal umbrellas, and multidisciplinary painter Kaloki Nyamai whose practice transmits storytelling form his grandmother. These artists and others in the exhibition challenge monolithic narratives about Africa, offering a boundless space that is as much a physical territory as it is a creative and spiritual state of mind.