Serpentine

Grace Wales Bonner presents the first in a new series of unique projects in the fields of music, fashion, art and design with Chino Amobi, Black Audio Film Collective, Rotimi Fani Kayode, David Hammons, Michael John Harper, Liz Johnson Artur, Rashid Johnson, Kapwani Kiwanga, Klein, Laraaji, Eric N. Mack, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Ben Okri, Ishmael Reed and Sahel Sounds.

Grace Wales Bonner is a cultural polymath, who sees fashion as a means to explore ideas of identity and self-expression. Wales Bonner is recognised as one of the most innovative designers of her generation, who is changing the ways in which we understand this discipline. Through her research, she has developed a design process that involves a rich cross-pollination of sources, bringing together literary, musical and visual references. Key to her practice are long-term collaborations with other practitioners who bridge multiple disciplines and genres. Each of her fashion collections is a meditation on cultural narratives, presented within a carefully considered scenography.

Themes of mysticism and ritual permeate Wales Bonner’s exhibition, which explores magical resonances within black cultural and aesthetic practices. Taking its title from Ben Okri’s collection of essays, A Time for New Dreams (2011), the exhibition focuses on the shrine as a symbolic pathway for imagining different worlds and possibilities. Over the course of one month, a multi-sensory installation and series of happenings invite contemplation and activate the gallery.

The exhibition features an assemblage of site-specific installations and shrines. Interested in the improvisations and uses of shrines throughout black histories, Wales Bonner views these spiritual structures as material portals into multiple frames of experience. Drawing upon the images and rhythms of rituals and ceremonies from all over the world, she moves across time and space by bringing these references into dialogue with one another.

This exhibition focuses on Wales Bonner’s rigorous research into multiple geographies and temporalities, culminating in the presentation of her forthcoming Autumn/Winter 2019 collection, Mumbo Jumbo. Conjuring and exploring various characters, their dress, and the worlds and spaces they inhabit, the collection features certain protagonists, such as the artist-shaman, a West African spiritual healer, and a gathering of Howard University intellectuals. At its close, the exhibition becomes an environment for the characters to inhabit.

A live programme includes composer, playwright and artist Klein, who performed a reading in the Gallery, Poet and DJ James Massiah who presented an evening of readings inside the exhibition, and performance artist Michael-John Harper, whose ritual of movements activated the Gallery at intervals during the exhibition. New texts and invocations by Ben Okri are woven through the Gallery spaces.

This presentation continues the Serpentine’s engagement with Wales Bonner's practice, following the artist’s participation in the 2015 Transformation Marathon.