Of Cords Curling around Mountains
September 25, 2021–January 30, 2022
Rivoli 10098
Italy
Hours: Wednesday–Friday 10am–5pm
Saturday–Sunday 11am–6pm
T +39 011 956 5222
Here is a poem by Otobong,
“The rock whispers
to the stone
You are an error
The stone pounds
the grainy sands
building rhythms of terror
The sands cry out
to the trail of dust
Stop the horror
The cloud of dust mingles
with the cushion of air
dancing to its beat with vigour
Our roots are anchored
to feed from this soil
The right place
to stay, to hold.
Home
When looking across the sea
Do you dream?
Of cords curling around mountains
Leaving trails in the distance
Lined with shivers sprouting from the rock.”
Our press release states,
“Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea presents the solo exhibition devoted to Otobong Nkanga (Kano, Nigeria, 1974), among the most innovative international contemporary artists. Her artworks address urgent issues related to the ecological crisis and the exploitation of natural resources. She investigates history with fine lyricism and celebrates the importance of physical materials and their care, even in a digitized world.
Drawing a new landscape, the installation includes carpets whose irregular form is inspired by the shape of minerals, such as quartz and malachite. The carpets extend into the space through long hand-woven ropes which in turn connect concave sculptural objects that suggest manipulation. Made of wood, glass and terracotta, they host organic materials or convey sounds, endowing the art with a performative and sensually relational component. The artist develops her exhibition at floor level through five large galleries of the third floor of the Castello to embrace the horizontality associated with the notion of geography. Travel is transit and connection between distant points; it brings into dialog the different cultural traditions that are interwoven in our contemporary world.
The exhibition at Castello di Rivoli is drafted by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Marcella Beccaria as part of a collaboration with Villa Arson, Nice.”
Two different registers of language. Was her poem not enough?
Would that it were.
Wooden water.
