50 golborne marie-claire messouma manlanbien …

50 GOLBORNE

50 Golborne Road, London, W10 5PR www.50golborne-artdesign.com+44 (0) 203 4418980 [email protected]

MARIE-CLAIRE MESSOUMA MANLANBIENFORCES FIELD

22nd May - 22nd June 2019

where the cells and its organs can still be moved, uncrystallised and mytho-logical beings. Where the landscape is both vast and intimate, untouched grounds and unmarked skins. Surely, the forms created and unmade by the pathways and nodes of which the works are punctuated also create another alphabet for a language that escapes the coloniser’s gaze and understanding. Hence, the first force fields of the works, their frames, are often playing with the idea of luxury and preciousness. Although they look like tradition-al – even classical – frames, their obvious artificiality – more gold than gold – is assumed and claimed. Messouma Manlanbien also adds subtle elements to them in order to confer them with esoteric powers (notice the small nipples). The frames, you will see, actually operate more as sources that guardians. Beyond them, constellations of elements stem out. Like wa-terfalls falling from the maps, their contaminate floors and walls, presenting islands forming ever-growing archipelagos.

With the help of a Senga Nengudi (with her R.S.V.P series, 1977 – ongo-ing) and a Joseph Beuys (with Coyote, 1974), it is crucial to understand that Messouma Manlanbien’s works are also used within performative frameworks, where wall-based works and sculptures turn into protective garments. There, they are even more loaded as force fields. For the artist, on a personal level, it is also a way to relate, more intimately, to knowl-edges and histories that she embodies but are so far apart geographically and historically. By re-appropriating traditional craftmaking techniques and including codes and forms from Ivory Coast’s matriarchal societies, while refusing representation of black subjects, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlan-bien inscribes herself in a genealogy of emerging artists challenging the misconceptions of blackness and its embodiments, hiding while showing. Creating force fields around her and beyond.

Text by Cedric Fauq Curator, Nottingham Contemporary

For her latest exhibition, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien continues investigating and producing forms that belong to a certain concept of the feminine blackness as it could be conceived beyond the white patriarchal gaze. More unapologetic than ever, her work, however, escapes the ex-pected forms that such a project could occupy: the installation doesn’t feature any-body or any epiderma. The title itself, Forces Field, hints at the idea of both protection and refusal. To speak about force fields when approaching artworks obviously recalls Walter Benjamin’s idea of the “art-work’s aura” as theorised in his well-known essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1999). But where the aura holds passiv-ity, the force field is active. It suggests strength and endurance.

I want to take the time of those lines to ask for a moment of suspension in order to better locate the origin of Messouma Manlanbien’s force fields, departing from the physicality of the work itself, as well as the ritualistic processes behind its making, and the potentialities that her works hold in their “exhibition” (taken as the act of presenting, showing). From afar, the sculptures and installations of the artists seem to be made out of rather banal and composite material, with no specific texture. They look like oddly scripted coded messages. They often fool you, as they sometimes are framed in these heavy golden frames that manifest a desire to be luxurious (an exercise in class-dragging). Coming closer, piercing through their force fields (they will decide to let you in), you face a whole new cosmos. They are simili-military maps, made out of dried raffia, human hair, and scraper sponges. The precarious geometry of these maps seems to both refer to a lost civili-sation: one that’s now extinct, but also one that is yet to come. They make the bridge between a foreign past and an unknowable future – where the territory of the black female body is reconfiguring itself permanently,

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INSTALLATION VIEWS

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IMAGES OF WORKS


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#3#Map, 2018-2019Copper and Hair Scrubbers162x120cm


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#4#Map, 2018-2019Rafia and Hair,scrubbers63x70cm


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#5#Map, 2018-2019Copper and Hair Scrubbers 63x70cm

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#Mater Fenetre sur #1, 2, 4, 5 & 6, 2019Copper, ink and resin10x15cm





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50 GOLBORNE


#Mater Fenetre sur #10, 15 & 11, 2019Copper, ink and resin20x30cm


50 GOLBORNEWomen walls #2, 2018-2019Copper, Scrubbers 67-135cm, 8 sculptures

50 GOLBORNE


#Feminine geography, 2019videoduration 5.12min

#mon buisson bien tasse, 2019videoduration 5.10min


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Wall Ladies #2, 2019 Wood Brass aluminium razor - engraving, sculptureDimension variable

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Poeme en Ruban de laiton #1, 2019Brass and engraving300 x 10cm, 4 ribbons

#Aluminum scrubbers and hair, 2018-19Aluminium and hair, 43 scrubbersDimensions variable


50 GOLBORNE

50 GOLBORNE


BIOGRAPHY

EXHIBITIONS AND FAIRS 201838th Biennal EVA International - Curator : Inti Guerrero, Limerick city , Ire-landArtBall 2018 organized by Amref Health Africa ArtBall at the A/D/O De-sign Institute, New York, Etats-UnisSOFT POWER - Curator Julie Crenn, Transpalette, Bourges , Belgique Collective exhibition «I’am what I’am» at the ici.gallery, belleville, Paris - France, Curator : Julie Crenn 12e Biennal of the young Creation at the Graineterie art Center of Houilles, France 2017Prélude de La pensée du tremblement, au grand voisin with the Diamètre group and the Jeune création group, Paris, FranceLa pensée du tremblement at the Grand voisin - Diamètre,Jeune création, Paris, FranceRoyaltrash - Curator : Giulia Casalini, Londres, Royaume-Uni par Cuntempo-rary.org - Support by Art council EnglandTrame(s) at the Épisodique Gallery, Paris , FranceExhibition at the YGREC ENSAPC Gallery - Les Grands Voisin, Paris , FranceL’élargissement des fantasmes, Curated by Eva BAROIS DE CAEVEL à la Maëlle Galerie, Paris, FranceLE QUATRIÈME SEXE at the art space Le Coeur - Curator : Marie Maertens, Paris FranceCompetition : La convocation (pre-selection) 2016 Autour du jeu at the 59 Gallery, Culturia group, Rivoli, Paris, France 61e Montrouge Artfair - Curator : Ami Barak et Marie Gautier (associate)

2015film at the CINEMA LA CLÉ - Paris, FranceMille Feuillets V at the YGREC Gallery for the DRAWING NOW PARIS Art-fair, Art fair of the Contemporary Drawing - Paris, France 2014MINIMENTA - at the Dorothy’s Gallery - End of the exhibition, Paris, FranceFestival - Résous moi! «je suis le lien que je tisse», Paris, France 2013The before of the Quai Branly Museum at the theater Claude Lévi-Strauss « KANAK – l’Art est une parole »Le grand Parquet of Paris, FranceThe Nuit Blanche at Le Carreau Cergy, FranceThe Pulp art fair, HDC at the Atelier Basfroi, Paris, France 2012 Donne moi de l’art at the Africa house , Paris, France 2011“Certaines sont pas mal” at Le Carreau Cergy, France 2010 Sun 3, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. PUBLICATIONS 2016 Book of the 61e Montrouge Art fair 2016 - Curator : Ami Barak and Marie Gautier2017 Book of the exhibition : Trame(s) at the Épisodique GalleryBook of the exhibition : Viens, mais ne viens pas quand je serai seule at the YGREC Gallery, Les Grands Voisin, Paris , France

50 golborne marie-claire messouma manlanbien …

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