Hearings

The Online Journal of Contour biennale

January 12 2017

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

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

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

© 2016–2017 Kunstencentrum NONA Begijnenstraat 19-21, B – 2800 Mechelen |

Diaoptasia – Our Future Will Be

By Otobong Nkanga