That Those Beings Be Not Being

Group Exhibition with Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Sheila Nakitende and Theresah Ankomah

Opening 6th – 29th May 2022 / Wed-Sat 4 – 7 pm

alpha nova & galerie futura, Berlin

Curators: Julia Gyemant and Nantume Violet

“Relation is knowledge in motion” – writes Edouard Glissant in his book Poetics of Relation from which we borrowed our title. As a form of errant knowledge, relation is capable to birth new and unexpected forms, abandoning the solid grounds of defined categories – such as the Nation, the Self and the Other – and venturing into the opaque gaps within.

The works of Dorothy Amenuke, Nakitende Sheila, and Theresah Ankomah presented in this exhibition explore questions of transience and relationality in diverse and complicated ways, establishing themselves within this space of opacity, in which according to Glissant lies the radical potential to subvert systems of domination. That which cannot be understood, cannot be controlled. That which cannot be fixed to a singular meaning in consonance with a certain cognitive framework, is free to roam and perpetuate its difference, producing a multiplicity of meanings in the process.