In a comprehensive exhibition, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt welcomes for the first time an impressive body of work by John Akomfrah. On view until January 28, 2024, “A SPACE OF EMPATHY” reveals the artist’s practice, still little known in Germany, through an impressive selection of video installations produced in recent years. This is a unique opportunity for the German public to discover the relevance and plurality of the contemporary artist’s video art.
John Akomfrah: a visionary of contemporary multimedia art
Born in 1957, John AKOMFRAH lives and works in London, creating circumspect multimedia works of enchanting audiovisual intensity. Taking on the role of a storyteller, he relates radical changes and crises, past and present, through large-format screens. Co-founder of the Black Audio Film Collective in London, he pairs film sequences of his own conception with archival material to create multi-layered collages, sometimes associative, often in the form of simultaneous narrative structures.
Numerous solo exhibitions include Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA (2022); Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada (2022); Towner Eastbourne, Eastbourne, U.K. (2021); Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (2021); Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain (2020); Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington (2020); Secession, Vienna, Austria (2020); BALTIC, Gateshead, U. K. (2019); ICA Boston, Boston, MA, USA (2019); Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal (2018); New Museum, New York (2018); Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Sweden (2018, 2015); SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA, USA (2018); and Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain (2018).
John Akomfrah also participates in numerous international film festivals and group exhibitions including the 15th Sharjah Biennale, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2023); The Africa Institute, Sharjah, UAE and Accra, Ghana (2022) ; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, USA (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Busan, South Korea (2021); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2021); Art Museum KUBE, Ålesund, Norway (2021) ; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2021); City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand (2020); Ghana Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale (2019); New Museum, New York, USA / The Store New Museum, New York, USA / The Store X, London, UK (2018); Prospect 4, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA (2017); Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2017); 56th Venice Biennale, Italy (2015); and The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada (2015).
“A SPACE OF EMPATHY”: a cinematic journey between past and present
In his work, John Akomfrah critically analyzes the colonial past, global migration and the climate crisis. To immerse viewers in a moving colonial atmosphere, “A SPACE OF EMPATHY” begins with a new immersive multi-screen installation, covering a thematic arc from early contact with settlers on the eastern coasts of North America, the conquistadors in Central and South America, and the arrival of Europeans in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and China. The exhibition will feature three major works: The Unfinished Conversation (2012), Vertigo Sea (2015) and his new work Becoming Wind (2023).
In his practice, John Akomfrah is interested in the singularity of historical representations, creating in his video narratives a work composed of several views. His installation thus evades the notion of linearity, offering an illusory single truth. Dr Sebastian Baden, Director of Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle, explains: “What makes John Akomfrah’s work so impressive is the coherence with which he treats the themes of migration, the climate crisis or the colonial past. These are the major themes of our contemporary times, for which he wants to create a sensibility as an international artist. Over time, his video installations combine newly shot film sequences and archival footage to create images of overwhelming emotion. There could be no better time to address John Akomfrah’s essential questions about humanity. Questions about the coexistence of man and the environment in Germany and at the Schirn to discuss here.“
Julia Grosse, curator of the exhibition “A Space of Empathy“, backs up the Schirn Kunsthalle director’s words: “John Akomfrah wants to show what has not been seen, what has not been told, what has not been heard. In strong, poetic images, his installations describe the urgency of his themes, without moralizing. The artist manages to integrate and establish complex links in a differentiated way. He is not only interested in human points of view, but also in the narratives of the living world. He always involves the living world, such as plants and animals. Through his work, he proposes changes of perspective and questions the consequences of collective and individual actions. Basically, he wants to create a space of empathy with visitors”.
The public will first be introduced to a reading area specially set up for the occasion. It will feature publications related to the artist’s video work, as well as questions arising from his research. The library has also been enriched by John Akomfrah’s investigative works. The reading room will serve as a place for discussion and reflection on the themes addressed in his installations, and will also host creative reading sessions for the SCHIRN BOOKCLUB, as well as workshops.
The Unfinished Conversation
Produced in 2012, The Unfinished Conversation is a 54:48-minute, three-channel, 7.1 sound HD video installation that pays tribute to renowned British cultural theorist Hall, sociologist and founder of Cultural Studies Stuart Hall (1932-2014). Having been in contact with him for some time, John Akomfrah’s video montage describes a sensitive, almost poetic exploration of Hall’s legacy.
Drawing on the theorist’s life, theories and conceptions, he also questions notions of identity, immigration and colonialism. Using a wide range of elements, including archives, photographs and historical events, the artist creates a space of sound and profound experience that takes a critical look at British society.
The Unfinished Conversation is composed of sequences of key images from the life of the theorist Hall and events from the British period, such as Hall’s theoretical work and the unsolved murder of the Antiguan Kelso Cochrane. Literary references are also included, such as William Blake, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf.
Jazz music is also an important part of the video installation, both in terms of sound and image, with portions of film revealing musicians or records in rotation. John Akomfrah’s installation addresses Hall’s theory that being is a “constantly evolving process“, a product of history, memory and identity, as well as of interference between the public and the private.
According to the theorist, identity and ethnicity are not predefined boxes, but rather details of an “always unfinished conversation“. The Unfinished Conversation thus appears as an experimental extension of the documentary aesthetic approach, but also as a plenary and critical approach to history, a visibility as well as a questioning of one-dimensional narratives about the realities of life for black people in Britain.
Vertigo Sea
Vertigo Sea is a three-channel HD color video installation, realized in 2015, 7.1 sound, 48:30 minutes long. More a poetic cinematic meditation than a multimedia artistic work, the installation navigates from one century to the next, exploring the relationship between man and the sea.
Offering an immersive visual of the seabed on three large screens, John Akomfrah combines footage he filmed himself in the Faroe Islands, Skye and Norway with archival footage from the BBC’s breathtaking nature documentaries, which he skilfully interweaves with narratives of fragments from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) and Heathcote Williams’ Whale Nation (1988).
This video work by John Akomfrah deals with the sea as a whole, as well as the problems associated with it, such as structures of exploitation and current ecological issues. Beauty and horror are superimposed within dense image sequences revealing the whaling industry and the deportation of millions of Africans during the transatlantic slave trade. Numerous excerpts from the video installation deal with the atrocities suffered by slaves during the trade.
Iconic biographies and film footage have even been added by the artist to reveal the historical depth of this fateful period for the black race. Through this pertinent superimposition of frames, stories and periods, John Akomfrah highlights the neglected aspects of history. Vertigo Sea, then, offers a stylistic visual with unexpected references that go beyond a bloodless narrative. The video work has already been shown at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) as part of Okwui Enwezor’s “All The Futures” exhibition, and represents one of John Akomfrah’s central works.
Becoming Wind
In this five-channel, black-and-white, 7.1 surround-sound HD video with a running time of 31:45 minutes, the contemporary artist creates a symbolic representation of the Garden of Eden and its demise. His new work plunges the audience into a lush past where animal and plant species cohabit in harmony. The various scenes, sometimes of children on the beach, sometimes of the diversity and richness of the environment, subtly raise questions about the current state of the disrupted ecosystem.
Phrases such as “We have to be quick” or “It’s moving between us“, in the context of the climate crisis, call out and raise collective awareness. John Akomfrah’s video installation, with its transgender characters evolving in their daily routines, also takes up another theme. These multimedia sequences reveal the importance of truly recognizing oneself and being able to evolve freely.
On the other hand, they bear witness to the lightning transmutation of ecological spaces and future adaptation to them. The contemporary artist underlines the rapidity of today’s changes by asserting: “We would almost have to become something like the wind to achieve this“. BECOMING WIND premiered at this year’s 15th Sharjah Biennale.