“Creation” 2023 Mixed Media on Canvas
Honoured and delighted to be participating at the Sharjah Triennial 2023, "The Beauty of Impermanence" An Architecture of Adaptability with cave bureau, a Nairobi based bureau of architects and researchers charting explorations into architecture and urbanism within nature. whose work addresses the anthropological and geological context of the postcolonial African city as a means to confront the challenges of our contemporary rural and urban lives.
In this triennial, the ninth installment of Cave Bureau’s ( Anthropocene Museum 9.0 ) research series constitutes the adaptation and tour of Sharjah’s old slaughterhouse, whose primary protagonists are the animals —cows, goats, sheep, and camels — consumed in the city; often without thought of their origins or how they are processed. The audience is corralled through an ever-present, but seldom reflected upon municipal event space, in a building that is now only intermittently used.
“The old Sharjah slaughterhouse”
The work I've presented at the old Sharjah slaughterhouse with cave bureau explores our humanity. The forms are stripped of flesh as a metaphor for how skin often informs stereotypes and the idea of exposed flesh, ribcages, raw, and bloody the grotesque is to explore a time in decline. The vulnerable form, in this exposure is a reflection of how we contend with our own intimate nature the forms which are dissected become ambiguous, abstracted, free to move unencumbered beyond the frame. This internal structure with its endless possibilities, its transient nature is a point of reference in my work as an observation of our shared experiences. The work is inspired by a concatenation of events, (human) events, leading to the exploration of our bodies in a space and time of change; interrogating encounters within our individual states and the dysfunctionality rooted in our social structures, the intensity of these times as a consequence of this, our humanity has now come face to face with the fall out resulting from these fragmented systems.
“The Primal and Unutterable III” 2023
At the core of the exhibit lies the philosophical underpinning of meaningful impermanence. In life, only death is certain, everything else is in flux. Visitors are encouraged to view the ever-shifting built landscape of life as an opportunity for reversed notions of growth, through introspection, and spiritual reconnection. It asks one to accept the need to adapt through a new planetary consciousness, that embraces meaningful impermanence without us building almost anything at all.
