A journey
2024
Installation
Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Món
Barcelona
An invitation of The Green Parrot
Images © Gunnar Knechtel
I have to admit that this object interests me far more for what it was, or could have been, than for what it is today (a piece of wood, a number, nothing). The only information we have says “ancestor statue” and tells us about the material it is made of, where it was acquired from, and when. Who was this ancestor, and what was she like? Does she live on within this object? Did she magically disappear at the very moment Jordi Sabater i Pi decided that the statue was to be brought to Barcelona’s Ethnographic Museum? Or did she die slowly, shut away in a storeroom? How did her descendants remember her when the statue was no longer there? Has anybody been looking for her over all these years?
AEL
Essonti has chosen a wooden statuette from Central Africa to revisit questions focused on ethnographic concepts - because ethnography is a fundamentally European science - contrasting them with notions of ancestry and spirituality from African cosmologies. This statuette, currently in the reserve, is a protected piece with heritage status and can only be seen in exhibitions. But if, beyond the authenticity of the object, what interests us is its meaning, it could be presented in a different way, in this case through a replica. The artist photographed the original statue in the museum and commissioned a copy from Ibrahima Seydi, a Senegalese artisan living in Barcelona. This replica is “reenchanted” and travels with the artist to Cameroon, engaging with both place and family and friends. It is captured in a photographic series.
Rosa Lleó
A Journey @ ART-O-RAMA (Marseille) with Bombon Projects x Cordova