Screening and discussion
Rahima Gambo, Nolan Oswald Dennis
29 Jun 2023
29 Jun 2023
The event is over
At the crossroads between documentary, psycho-geography, socio-politics and ecology, the artistic practice of Rahima Gambo (born in 1986 in Niger) ranges from drawing to video, sculpture, installation and sound, which she uses as poetic and theoretical tools to explore documentary processes outside pre-existing traditions.
Tatsuniya, which means story, tale or fable in Hausa (a language spoken in West Africa), is an ongoing series combining photographs and films set in the Shehu Sanda Kyarimi school in Maiduguri, Nigeria. It is a collaborative project carried out with 20 students from the school and presents fairy-tale-like sequences that lead into improvised scenes using children’s games, poetry and exercises from a physical education book for secondary school pupils.
Instrument of Air (2O21) uses walking and drifting to deploy a narrative device that is simultaneously memorial, performative and sculptural. Besides the birdsong and the artist’s footsteps, the images are accompanied by the sound of a traditional Fulani flute played by Kaito Winse, a griot and musician from Burkina Faso. The title of the work echoes the language used by experimental educator Fernand Deligny and the concepts derived from his writings and theories.
In dialogue with the films of Rahima Gambo, Nolan Oswald Dennis (born in 1988 in Zambia) presents his latest film, Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology (2023), which focuses on an archaeological site of the oldest kingdom of southern Africa: Mapungubwe, a scarred but still living ancient landscape. In his film, Nolan Oswald Dennis uses the notion of past-present-future developed by South-African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, which he considers a guide that allows us to see and understand the world from this “surviving” landscape.
Rahima Gambo,Tatsuniya I (2017, 7 min)
Rahima Gambo, Tatsuniya II (2019, 14 min)
Rahima Gambo, Instruments of Air (2021, 15 min)
Nolan Oswald Dennis, Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology (2023, 21 min) – Hartwig Art Foundation. Promised gift to the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed / Rijkscollectie
Screening followed by a conversation with Rahima Gambo, Nolan Oswald Dennis and Alicia Knock, Curator and Head of the Contemporary Creation and Forecasting Department
Where
Cinema 1, level 1
When
29 Jun 2023
© Rahima Gambo