30.3. – 21.6.2025
»Beat the Silence: Sonic Chronicles« with Arthur Jafa, Christelle Oyiri, JulianKnxx, Theaster Gates & Elom 20ce
M.Bassy e.V. is curating for spring 2025 the interdisciplinary exhibition project »Beat The Silence: Sonic Chronicles« presenting video and sound installations by visual artists Arthur Jafa, Christelle Oyiri, Julianknxx, Theaster Gates & Elom 20ce in whose artistic oeuvres music plays a central role being understood as a tool creating resonance between the individual self and its social and spatial environment and thereby having the power to change the world and unite people.
The 3-month group exhibition aims to explore the deep connection between Black visual art and music on an aesthetic, sensual and socio-political level to explore the following questions: What is the historical and contemporary role of music as an artistic medium in challenging a hegemonic and Western worldview and in promoting inclusive and socially engaged critical thinking? What is the significance of music for Black communities as an instrument of connection and resistance? What transformative power does music hold as a means of imagining alternative visions of the future?
»Throughout recent history, music has been one of the first sources for Black people to learn how to think critically. Through music, we learn that the education system does not provide us with the knowledge of resistance that we need to survive.« (Minna Salami »Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone«, 2021)
The exhibition will be accompanied by an artist residency by Elom 20ce from Togo and a workshop series #1 -4, which will give the young audience a multi-perspective approach to music as an artistic practice and as a tool for self-empowerment and collective experience. These participatory event formats
will be led by renowned Hamburg and Berlin cultural actors.
Arthur Jafa
Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, Mississippi, lives in Los Angeles, USA) is an artist and filmmaker. From an early age, Jafa collected images from different social contexts, time periods and historical backgrounds to compiled them into a common storyline in albums. He still follows this approach today translating it visually via contemporary technical and digital tools. His work has been influenced by film history and the science fiction genre as well as music such as that of African-American jazz musician Miles Davis. Jafa initially worked as a music video artist with musicians such as Jay-Z and Solange before becoming known internationally as a visual artist. Jafa grew up at a time when racial segregation was still very pronounced in the USA, thus his work always confronts injustices, racist world views and the realities of oppressed identities. African-American tradition and culture are deeply rooted in his artistic language. His works have been exhibited in renowned international cultural institutions.
Christelle Oyiri
Christelle Oyiri (b.1992 in Paris, lives in Paris, France) is a DJ, electronic music producer, filmmaker and visual artist with roots in Martinique, Guadalupe and the Ivory Coast. Her multidisciplinary and heterogeneous work, which oscillates between installations, sculptures and video works, performances and DJing under the artist’s name Crystallmess, explores oral and auditory traditions of storytelling that are subject to forms of creolization and hybridity. Oyiri's work touches on issues related to collective memory or communal mythologies. Her research focuses on the sounds, textures and visual vernacular of music and popular cultures, both within and outside the African diaspora. Her work has been shown at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Musée Espace Arlaud, Lausanne; at Ars Electronica, Austria and at HeK, Basel, among others. In 2023 she was Artist-in-Residence at Villa Albertine in New York, USA.
JulianKnxx
Julian Knox (b. 1987 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, lives in London, UK) is a poet, artist and filmmaker. The polyphonic nature of Julianknxx’s work is indicative of his expansive artistic practice, which is rooted in poetry but extends into performance, film, music and sculpture. Julianknxx draws on his personal experiences to broaden perspectives on the history and culture of Africa and its diasporas. Inspired by oral history traditions and working with a distinctive aesthetic approach, his films invite us to consider how we construct both local and global narratives, while reflecting on how it feels to exist in liminal spaces. His work has been shown at galleries and museums worldwide, with his acclaimed first institutional solo show »Chorus in Rememory of Flight« at the Barbican, London, UK (2023), called “transcendent and poignant” by the Evening Standard. Recent group shows include »A World in Common« at Tate Modern, London, UK (2023); »Rites of Passage« at Gagosian, London, UK (2023) and »To Be Held« at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, UK (2023). Performances include »Chorus in Flight« at St James’s Church, London, UK (2023); »Sonic Performance«, Art Basel Conversations, Basel, Switzerland (2023); and one at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal (2023).
Theaster Gates
Theaster Gates (b. 1973 in Chicago, Lives in Chicago, USA) artistic practice ranges from urban interventions to performance and pottery. He is furthermore a singer with the Black Monks of Mississippi and was appointed the first ‘distinguished visiting artist’ and director of artistic initiatives at the Lunder Institute for American Art, which is part of the Colby College Museum of Art, USA. The trained urban planner became known for Dorchester Projects, a neighborhood improvement project in the impoverished South Side of Chicago, USA, which he himself described as ‘real estate art’. In his work, he always aims to connect the fields of art and society to initiate social, political and spatial change through the creation of cultural communities. Since his appearance at Art Basel in 2013, when he turned 100 marble slabs with the inscription »In Art We Trust« taken from the toilets of a bank in danger of demolition into bank bonds to finance the renovation of the cultural center Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago, USA, Gates has been one of the most important voices in contemporary art. He is represented in international collections and his work has been presented in major solo and group exhibitions worldwide.
Elom20ce
Elom Kossi Winceslas (b. 1982 in Lomé, lives in Lomé, Togo) aka Elom 20ce is a thinker, pan-African activist, poet, rapper, performer, designer and filmmaker. He is also the brain behind the clothing brand Asrafobawu, the label Asrafo Records and the concept Arctivism. He released his first album »Analgézik« in 2012. 2020 saw the release of »Amewuga«, which is considered one of the ten best albums in Africa. His oeuvre, which operates at the interface of music, art, poetry and performance, also includes numerous film works. In his multidisciplinary work, Elom 20ce uses music to create a connection between the political and the spiritual by stimulating the senses. Born in Togo, a former German and then French colony, the artist is now often active in Paris taking an uncompromising look at his relationship with France. Elom 20ce will be Artist-in-Residence at M.Bassy for the exhibition project.
OPENING:
29.3.2024, 7 PM, with a live performance by Elom 20ce & Alexis Hountondji, Artist Talk moderated by Musa Okwonga
(Sorry, the opening is booked out)
Please reserve via: reservation@m-bassy.org
M.Bassy e.V., Schlüterstraße 80, 20146 Hamburg
Opening hours during the run time of the exhibition: Thu – Sun, 2 – 6 PM
WORKSHOP SERIES:
12.4., 1–3 PM: WS #1 »Poetry & Writing« with Lubi Barre
10.5., 1–3 PM: WS #2 »Vocal Guidance« with FAYIM
24.5., 1–4 PM: WS #3 »DJing« with Helina
14.6., 1–2:30 PM: WS #4 »Hip Hop Dance« with Lulia Ghirmay
Participation free of charge, incl. drinks & snacks
Please reserve: reservation@m-bassy.org
We would like to thank Stiftung Kunstfonds and Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien for its generous support of the exhibition project as well as the Rudolf Augstein Foundation and the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media for their funding. Our thanks also go to Gladstone Gallery, Los Angeles; GRAY, New York; Studio Knxx and to the Hamburg music and project manager Axel Zielke for their cooperation and support in realizing the project.
