Performance

Wanderers

a still from a video performance

duration 06:06

2021

co created with Mad Kate

video  

A 45mins performance in an enclosed room with blindfold exploring nomadic movements, body, revisiting moments, space, time as a way of finding comfort. As is one of the many series i am currently exploring using my personal experience on prejudice and stereotype

Not Home

a still from the video

duration 02:36 

2021

video

 

not home explains the opposite. Artist performed this piece as is one of the series of work based on the prejudice that i experiences in life. When others feel you don’t belong somewhere or deserve situations just judging by your appearance and yet you still find comfort. Work is based on the artist own personal experience.

Facing the Wind,
Performace video
duration 1:10
2020
co created by Alina Usurelo
documented by Cristina Lillienfield
Watch Video

"Facing the wind" is dealing with sexual tensions metaphorically where by there is a strong connection between the artists. They both show a strong will to not be moved by what they feel or see by ignoring all distractions and staying to the tune.


supposing if you are facing the wind, you are fighting and resisting against it. Onsoh sees himself by being carried by it, unlike those around. He doesn't fit in, he is different and isn't in control of his own life perhaps dealing with the stigma. This performance is He questioning this

In ‘The Return of the Slaves’ exhibition, crazinisT artisT employed about 60 participants, both local and international in a durational performance, 12 hours in Elmina Castle slave dungeon overnight without food and water.

 

This active engagement investigates the ostensible ‘Dungeons without Wall’ as a social process in our contemporary time. The performance evokes the unpleasant objectification of humanity as an institutional or private patronage and consumption of the body in relation to time, displacement and redefinition of cultural identity.
 
However, this enactment creates a dialogue to contemporary human slavery that explores the emergence of political violence, hate cultures, intolerance and prevailing crimes against humanity within and outside Africa.
The title, ‘The Return of the Slaves’ is a meditative reflection of the history of global ancestry which explores the present state of human objectification under the various forms of crimes against humanity and suppression in our perceived post-slavery societies and beyond.
 
The Atlantic slaves can never return because they have travel beyond time and space. However, the history of the bitterest experience of our ancestors should redefine our present existence in a global economic state. The ‘return’ is our conscience, our spirituality, our sense of ‘being’ and a mental disentangle from the constructive rigidity of the mind. The returnees must be freed from all forms of mental cages that promote stigmatization and humiliation of minorities as a quest global supremacy.
Slavery is no longer a history of captives in literal chains and dungeons even though there are still many forms of human trafficking, but rather it is the focus on human borders and captives of cultural- identity and mental enslavement.
 
 
Photo credit: Deryk Owusu Bempah Photography  
Video Credit: Chikis Photography

Collaborative Institutions

Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST

 Elmina Castle, Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB)

 

Supporters

blaxTARLINES, KNUST

Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST

 

Sponsors and donors

Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, GMMB

Elmina Castle

Cashew Trade Centre Ltd (funding)

Niels Staats, Natascia Silverio, Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Biekro Akpene, Michael Commey (Individual donors)Exhibition Location

Elmina Castle, Central Region, Ghana