Yonamine PARLA_MUTE
PARLA_MUTE
17 Sep - 17 Dec 2022
Yonamine, PARLA_MUTE, 2022, Installation view at Michael Janssen Berlin, Photo:Studio Lepkowski
Yonamine, PARLA_MUTE, 2022, Installation view at Michael Janssen Berlin, Photo:Studio Lepkowski
Yonamine, PARLA_MUTE, 2022, Installation view at Michael Janssen Berlin, Photo:Studio Lepkowski
Michael Janssen Berlin is pleased to announce Angolan artist Yonamine’s first solo exhibition, PARLA_MUTE in Germany. The exhibition opens on Friday, September 16 and is on view until November 12, 2022.
"The title of the show - PARLA_MUTE - is the name of a pathology: a parliament without a voice. PARLA_MUTE has always existed in my subconscious, perhaps because I have lived in a country whose regime is authoritarian and militarized, where you are not allowed to think or have your own opinions. PARLA_MUTE is a kind of cultural asphyxia in search of intellectual oxygen, filled with chaos and hope." (YONAMINE, August 2022)
Yonamine’s unique “mixing/remixing” approach to art is deeply influenced by nomadic heritage of African diaspora. Since early age the artist has been moving between Angola, Brazil, UK, Zimbabwe (and many more), absorbing local cultures and blending them with personal experience into a true visual explosive cocktail.
For PARLA_MUTE Yonamine set up his studio for two weeks in the gallery space, working on site, producing a new series of posters, silkscreens and large-scale collages. The newly created works are made from a number of phrases and graphic material picked up, once more, literally from the streets and transformed incessantly through the remix and culminating in a total work of art that incorporates the entire interior and exterior gallery space.
We should prepare ourselves, once more, for a poignant show filled with seemingly contradictory messages — “It’s expensive to be poor” resonates strongly or think about the title if one reads it on a bilingual horizon — in which the incessant variations of a handful of themes take centerstage, as they unfold and unfold infinitely. In other words: prepare yourself to contemplate (and enjoy) the critical difference that separates iteration from repetition because Yonamine will stage a show on such a gap. When you get to the show don’t mind the gap: he inhabits it, it is his favorite place, his most fertile locus; he knows it as any experienced surfer knows the waves of her favorite beach. It is there, amidst the incessant proliferation of posters, signs and messages that we will be able to realize that some of his incursions into the beaches of the contemporary sublime are so riveting admirable, so provocative tempting, that one just has no option but to follow him, surfboard in hand, wherever he goes.
Yonamine (1975, Luanda) currently lives and works in Athens and is among others represented by Cristina Guerra Gallery in Portugal. His works were featured in 15th Istanbul Bienali (2017), 31 São Paulo Biennale (2014), IX Sharjah Biennale (2009) and in China Africa - Crossing the world color line at Centre Pompidou (2020). The artist’s latest institutional solo show Amnésia & Dislexia is currently on view at Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães, Guimarães, Portugal.
Yonamine currently lives and works in Athens, Greece, and is also represented by Cristina Guerra Gallery in Portugal.
"The title of the show - PARLA_MUTE - is the name of a pathology: a parliament without a voice. PARLA_MUTE has always existed in my subconscious, perhaps because I have lived in a country whose regime is authoritarian and militarized, where you are not allowed to think or have your own opinions. PARLA_MUTE is a kind of cultural asphyxia in search of intellectual oxygen, filled with chaos and hope." (YONAMINE, August 2022)
Yonamine’s unique “mixing/remixing” approach to art is deeply influenced by nomadic heritage of African diaspora. Since early age the artist has been moving between Angola, Brazil, UK, Zimbabwe (and many more), absorbing local cultures and blending them with personal experience into a true visual explosive cocktail.
For PARLA_MUTE Yonamine set up his studio for two weeks in the gallery space, working on site, producing a new series of posters, silkscreens and large-scale collages. The newly created works are made from a number of phrases and graphic material picked up, once more, literally from the streets and transformed incessantly through the remix and culminating in a total work of art that incorporates the entire interior and exterior gallery space.
We should prepare ourselves, once more, for a poignant show filled with seemingly contradictory messages — “It’s expensive to be poor” resonates strongly or think about the title if one reads it on a bilingual horizon — in which the incessant variations of a handful of themes take centerstage, as they unfold and unfold infinitely. In other words: prepare yourself to contemplate (and enjoy) the critical difference that separates iteration from repetition because Yonamine will stage a show on such a gap. When you get to the show don’t mind the gap: he inhabits it, it is his favorite place, his most fertile locus; he knows it as any experienced surfer knows the waves of her favorite beach. It is there, amidst the incessant proliferation of posters, signs and messages that we will be able to realize that some of his incursions into the beaches of the contemporary sublime are so riveting admirable, so provocative tempting, that one just has no option but to follow him, surfboard in hand, wherever he goes.
Yonamine (1975, Luanda) currently lives and works in Athens and is among others represented by Cristina Guerra Gallery in Portugal. His works were featured in 15th Istanbul Bienali (2017), 31 São Paulo Biennale (2014), IX Sharjah Biennale (2009) and in China Africa - Crossing the world color line at Centre Pompidou (2020). The artist’s latest institutional solo show Amnésia & Dislexia is currently on view at Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães, Guimarães, Portugal.
Yonamine currently lives and works in Athens, Greece, and is also represented by Cristina Guerra Gallery in Portugal.