LONDON.- For her inaugural exhibition with Lisson Gallery, Otobong Nkanga presents new sculptural objects, tapestries and a sound installation, as well as wall-hung and floor-based works – combining materials as diverse as clay, rope, glass, wood, textiles, oils and herbs. As an evocation of natural environments, Nkanga incorporates the images and properties of various stones and minerals into a new, monumental carpet, while towers of raku-fired ceramics create intermittent forests of scorched tree trunks. For every suggestion of destruction – a parched or ruined landscape – there is also the possibility of hope and renewal in the same space – a pool of rejuvenative liquid, the scent of essential oils or a purifying powder.
A series of hand-braided rope sculptures, collectively titled Silent Anchors, hang or lay in each room as talismans or spatial cleansers for certain bodily or worldly ailments, some works hooked to the wall and cascading down to a selection of wooden, dice-like charms or biomorphic, blown-glass repositories. Nkanga fills indentations in these glass vials with scents or remedies, such as lavender (antioxidant, anti-anxiety), chamomile (anti-inflammatory, soothing), or St John’s Wort (anti-bacterial, anti-depressant), representing circulatory systems of materials that are harvested, traded and ingested – both on an individual and a global level.
Other zones of respite in the exhibition include a carpet installation, coloured in deep red and purple tufts, based on the minerals pyrargyrite (from the Greek Pyr for fire and Argyros for silver) with the addition of actual samples of shungite (a carbon-rich metallic black stone, known to block electromagnetic radiation and purify water) and tourmaline (a crystalline gemstone valued by some for its detoxifying properties). New tapestry works by Nkanga employ a multilayered surface of fibrous layers, some incorporating figurative and evocative imagery, while there are also abstract and malleable levels to these complex textiles, allowing the uppermost black veils to be sculpted and shifted by the artist’s hand. Flame-licked ceramic towers made from stacked and striated columns of crackelured cylinders (produced for a major museum show in Spain last year) create tree trunk-like punctuations, each work accompanied by bowls of sustaining seeds, soil or materials proffered as ritualised gifts.
Below this otherworldly landscape is a dark cavern of voices, a six-channel audio piece performed by the artist under the Pidgin Nigerian title, Wetin You Go Do? Oya Na (2020), asking ‘what are you going to do’? In this soundscape, Nkanga chants, sings and pronounces in six distinct voices and overlapping characters; some representing mother earth, others simulating extreme psychological states and one even caricaturing a spokesperson at a political rally.
Combining poetry, sculpture, audio and performance, Nkanga has created a complex, fluctuating environment in which some elements appear to have been scorched by flames, while others are, by their very nature, reparative or restorative. This exhibition hints at the full range of her capacious practice, linking themes of global warming with personal self-care and the interconnectedness of all things.
Otobong Nkanga will take on her first permanent UK commission for Art on the Underground at Nine Elms Underground station, to launch in 2025.
