Diaoptasia – Our Future Will Be
By Otobong Nkanga
Otobong Nkanga: Diaoptasia, 2016, performance with body-worn paper, wooden and tape sculpture, acrylic on paper signs, copper hair sculpture, glitter, metal rods, sliding screens, talcum powder, various minerals (malachite, azurite, dioptase) at BMW Tate Live: Performance Room, November 26, 2015, Tate Modern, London, photo: Lucy Dawkins, courtesy of the artist
Fractures can sometimes be identified
As light falls on its aching path
How do you see the cracks that appear?
Would it be rough and irregular?
Maybe shell like, smooth and curved?
Or maybe jagged and sharp edged like broken metal
Forming elongated splinters
Breaking like clay or chalk?
Our future is to live with bruises,
Uneven, hackly, splintery, earthly
Sometimes brittle, sectile, malleable, flexible and elastic
Will we be able to resist
the crushing, tearing, bending and breaking?
Could we be easily broken
Into powder by the cutting and hammering?
Would we be pounded
Into thin sheets like brass or copper?
Will we be bent to not return
To our original form when stress is released?
Would we be bent like a string
Only to return to the original form when stress is released?
Our future will be, can be, and definitely be
With bruises, uneven, hackly, splintery,
Earthly, brittle, sectile, malleable, flexible and elastic
The lights shift to slowly fade
Will we be able to resist the stress?
Otobong Nkanga: Diaoptasia, 2016, performance with body-worn paper, wooden and tape sculpture, acrylic on paper signs, copper hair sculpture, glitter, metal rods, sliding screens, talcum powder, various minerals (malachite, azurite, dioptase) at BMW Tate Live: Performance Room, November 26, 2015, Tate Modern, London, photo: Lucy Dawkins, courtesy of the artist
Otobong Nkanga: Diaoptasia, 2016, performance with body-worn paper, wooden and tape sculpture, acrylic on paper signs, copper hair sculpture, glitter, metal rods, sliding screens, talcum powder, various minerals (malachite, azurite, dioptase) at BMW Tate Live: Performance Room, November 26, 2015, Tate Modern, London, photo: Lucy Dawkins, courtesy of the artist