We went to an exhibition at the National Museum Wales for the 8th Artes Mundi award shortlist, where we saw installations, moving images, cut outs, sculptures and stills all representing different themes from different areas in the world. Each exhibit had various political, social and cultural themes which allowed us, the audience, to create discourses around the exploration of colonialism, industrialism, covert military operations and the moral tendencies behind them as well as discussing the blurred lines between the conscious and the subconscious.
Personally I found a few of the exhibits to be a little bit far fetched, slightly pretentious and not really making the focus of their installations very clear or tightly related. However, Otobang Nkanga’s exhibit I really liked. Titled Manifest of Strains and Double Plot, one part of her work was a huge scale tapestry that featured themes of colonialism and ethnic background, and this linked with the second part of her work which was a circular handrail that had three different features that focused on the basic elements of the Earth – air, water and fire (also featuring a rock which would represent earth, but this was entwined with the air element).
I thought Nkanga’s work was explorative of cultural and politically relevant themes as well as creating a discourse on something that was personal to her – her work was based off of her own people’s experiences in Nigeria.
Intensive Production 