In collaboration with UNDERGROUND Contemporary Art, the Vodo Art Society and Lab and the Weaver Bird Residency, Amasaka Gallery is organizing “SILENT INVASIONS: THE ART OF MATERIAL HACKING” until January 13, 2024. A large-scale group exhibition featuring no fewer than 30 talented contemporary artists of Ugandan and Ghanaian origin. Through a festival of artistic media, these contemporary actors from two different countries unite to explore the expansive concept of hacking in an analysis of its applications and materials through to its ideologies and intangible viral forms.
“SILENT INVASIONS: THE ART OF MATERIAL HACKING” silently invades an architecture abandoned to its imprecise future, like foliage slowly but surely covering an obsolete building. Art emerges from incomplete brick walls like unusual mushrooms, mingling with the structure and continuing its expansion, eventually overtaking it. Whether it’s abandoned constructions, art practices and perspectives, historical narratives, social resignifications of collective memories, communication norms, security and surveillance policies and politics of representation, hacking emerges as a form of integration of new, narrowly defined subjectivities into current everyday life. The systems are presented in a variety of forms and on a variety of subjects. This visual format creates a distraction that serves to divert the point of view in order to direct the narrative towards new perspectives.
Such complex discussions augur a pertinent exploration of multiple art forms beyond the traditional painting and sculpture inherited from colonization, which consequently models the careers of many African artists. In the practice of their art, contemporary artists transcend the limits of conformations by exploring other horizons and forms that the materialization of their art might take. Indeed, they seek no limits in terms of figures and content, integrating video, photography, performance, digital art and installations using local materials and numerous alternative media that are difficult to manipulate and integrate into artistic creation.
This Uganda-Ghana exchange program, hosting the Ghanaian art community blaxTARLINES, is an introduction to connecting and expanding the African art scene. Today’s political and artistic realities compel contemporary African actors to collaborate in order to take the discipline’s primary principle of transcending national borders and taking it beyond Europe and America. This artistic exchange, which gives life to the exhibition “SILENT INVASIONS: THE ART OF MATERIAL HACKING“, highlights the importance of unity within the African artistic community, exploring an economy of community currencies and embracing the plurality and richness of the continent as a whole. As East and West Africa connect, a stronger, more cohesive African arts community emerges that celebrates diversity, embraces resilience and propels the continent forward.
Next spring, OnCurating Zurich will present a special issue dedicated to this enriching exchange program experience and its theoretical, practical and poetic consequences. The magazine will relocate the project in writing form, addressing the four-year collaborative research process around the world and insurgent production practices in the Global South. In the meantime, until January 13, 2024, Galerie AMASAKA, will be delighted to unveil the fruits of this collaboration between Ugandan and Ghanaian contemporary actors through its group exhibition “SILENT INVASIONS: THE ART OF Material HACKING“.
Exhibiting artists :
Adjo Kisser (Ghana), Afia Prempeh (Ghana), Akosua Odeibea Amoah-Yeboah (Ghana), Akanyijuka Evans (Uganda), Aloka Trevor (Uganda), Bright Ackwerh (Ghana), Dan Ngaara Ngalamulume (Rwanda), Daniel Arnan Quarshie (Ghana), Ethel Aanyu (Uganda), Frederick Ebenezer Okai (Ghana), Godelive Kasangati Kabena (DRC), Hassan Issah (Ghana), Jacqueline Katesi Kalange (Uganda), Jonathan Okoronkwo (Ghana), Kasagga Dennis (Uganda), Kiggundu Rodney (Uganda), Kiyingi Henry (Uganda), Kyakonye Allan (Uganda), Lisa C Soto (Puerto Rico/Ghana), MAKANO (DRC), Matt Kayem (Uganda), Nanteza Florence (Uganda), Odur Ronald (Uganda), Ojok Simon Peter (Uganda), Piloya Irene (Uganda), Sandra Suubi (Uganda), Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson (Ghana ), Wamala Kyeyune Joseph (Uganda), Xenson Ssenkaaba (Uganda) and Yiga Joshua (Uganda).