A collective labor of memory
“One never begins in a pure space, but rather on a surface saturated with images and unexpressed thoughts.”
—Seloua Luste Boulbina 1
Stratum in geology are those striated layers of exposed rock often worked and eroded by passing waters across the slow flowing of time. These surfaces expose what is mostly unseen, buried within the earth’s surface. “Stratificazioni” is an exhibition that transcribes these notions of evidencing those undercurrents and exposing histories, and social fabrics as connected to voids and absences in historical memory. The layering of our realities leans upon critical fabulation of all of those individuals and cultural epistemologies that ground us.
Through the invitation of ArtNoble Gallery, artist Jermay Michael Gabriel turns his “carte blanche” into a collective response that engages politics and poetics, immersing the viewers in associative arrangements of words and letters (Muna Mussie), shapes and faces (Jermay Michael Gabriel, Georges Senga), abstract and untold stories (Jim C. Nedd, Délio Jasse) that entice an embodied and intuitive viewing process. Connecting memory’s influence on self-perception in relation to the inhabitance of space, these interventions represent an intimation of the realities we construct around ourselves and how we self-identify within and throughout these constructed spaces that are our here and now.
From photography, sculpture, textile and mixed media works, the exhibition invites us to rethink our approach to historical archives, to the political, the aesthetic or the social. Here, the act of embroidering, dismantling, burning, assembling and observing is the knot passing from one world to another, from traditional to contemporary, from past to present. Stratificazioni’s featured works share, transmit and build strong connections; while offering various interpretations that can reveal deeper histories and practices, they also bring a dramatical and theatrical dimension to everyday life.
A reflect of their personal experiences of the poetics of space, the group show “Stratificazioni” multiplies mediums and create a broader constellation of identity, nationality, politics and personal aesthetics, transforming the mundane into dream and melancholy. Embracing an active role as the producers of our own narrative and as those tasked with exposing all that lies beneath, this group of artists challenge notions of preservation and achievability by looking towards collective memory and the collective labor of memory. Visibility and presence are shifted in the perspective provided by these artists who look to vanishing points embedded within archives and their classification but also are intent on creating their own. To peel back the layers of social and cultural histories is to evidence those atmospheric tensions that shaped and continue to solidify the world around us.
—Janine Gaëlle Dieudji
Participating artists:
Jermay Michael Gabriel, Délio Jasse, Muna Mussie, Jim C. Nedd, Georges Senga
at ArtNoble Gallery, Milan
until July 26, 2023