GILLION GRANTSAAN

GILLION GRANTSAAN

 

REBUILDING, REMEMBERING & RENEWING

By  Gillion Grantsaan & Ato Malinda

 

Gillion Grantsaan: Denmark

& Ato Malinda: Kenya

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”— Ways of Seeing (John Berger)
“... in a way we are imprisoned by who we are when we shape our stories.” (Lesley-Ann Brown)

Visual and performance artist Ato Malinda, Gillion Grantsaan and, affiliated to the exhibition in DK, poet /writer Lesley-Ann Brown (Trinidad, U.S. & Dk) explore the relationship between writing, building, space, ownership, migration, colonialism, gender, sexuality and inclusion. These variable link directly to experience both in Denmark and Kenya.

• In Kenya, Ato Malinda and Gillion Grantsaan researched and questioned, through visual language and experimental literature, the risky lifestyles on Kenya’s coastline. “With these empirical results, we attempted to create a figure, a protagonist who navigates his/ her way in search of greener pastures on a new continent. In Denmark we are questioning writing and space: How are the two connected? Bringing our personal perspectives, methods, viewpoints, personal narratives and cultural baggage, we each add on to the figure created in Kenya. We explore, through the constructions of a shack which is built next to Karen Blixen´s writing room, notions of writing, editing, of revising, of continuing a narrative” – explain the artists.

 

 

MICHELLE EISTRUP + JAMES MURUIKI, Too Long are Memories

TOO LONG ARE OUR MEMORIES

By James Muruiki & Michelle Eistrup

MICHELLE EISTRUP + JAMES MURUIKI

 BORDERS

By James Muruiki & Michelle Eistrup

James Muruiki:Kenya

“Over time I have become interested in exploring and collaborating with other people about the investigation of certain gaps in photography and other visual art media.” James Muruiki's work is characterised by an exploration of how far you can push the borders of the photographic media. The well-renowned photographer lives and works in Nairobi where he is a part of the pulsating art scene. But in an interview with African Creative Network James Muruiki says, that he does not see his situation as being different from life in other African countries, or in the rest of the world. His work as a visual artist was initiated by a process of self-reflection as an experimental photographer functioning mostly in an art scene which houses one channel of photography, namely photo journalism. To James Muruiki, looking at and being exposed to other art scenes in different countries highlighted these gaps in the medium.

Michelle Eistrup: Denmark 

Michelle Eistrup was born in 1969 in Copenhagen and has a Danish mother and a Jamaican father. She grew up in Jamaica, Paris and New York and has a BA in Social Anthropology from Haverford College. As an adult, she came "back" to Denmark, where she was accepted into the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts with an art work, consisting of herself hiding inside a cubical box. She graduated from the School of Media Arts in 2000. Michelle Eistrup has exhibited in art institutions and galleries in Europe, The Caribbean, Asia and Africa, including institutions like Aarhus Art Museum, Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Arnolfini (London), Momentum Nordic Festival for Modern Art (Moss, Norway), The Modern Museum (Stockholm), Sparwasser (Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, Fine Art Museum, Malaysia, The Taitu Art Center, Ethiopia and The National Art Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica. As a co-founder of the group Housing Spirits, Michelle Eistrup has, together with researchers, practitioners and artists in Benin and Denmark, disseminated the knowledge of traditional Voudoun mythology.

 

 

 

 

Søren Assenholt,We had a writer in Africa

WE HAD A WRITER IN AFRICA

Søren Assenholt: Denmark

He was educated at the Danish Academy of Fine Art, 2003-2010, and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, 2007-09. Lives and works in Denmark.

A new floor is laid out above the old one in the so-called Bird Room and Film Room in the Karen Blixen Museum. The new floor functions as a onepiece relief. It bears the imprints of millions and millions of footsteps of people walking on it.In a broader perspective, the project suggests that our history, our ancestors and predecessors are with us all the time during our wanderings.

Miriam Syowia Kyambi and Søren Assenholt have developed their individual projects, which, so to speak, created through a series of discussions with one another.

Miriam Syowia Kyambi, Portals I: Houses of the Present Past

Portals I: Houses of the Present Past

Miriam Syowia Kyambi : Kenya

Miriam Syowia Kyambi and Søren Assenholt have developed their individual projects, which, so to speak, create one another through a series of discussions.

The earthenware ceramic pieces are suspended from the ceiling in a darkened space, representing capsules of history. The sculptural pieces refer to ‘beings’ or a kind of energy, sometimes found in objects and spaces, which transcend time. These capsules or time vessels consciously display their agelessness. Some of the openings in the sculptures are like eyelets that, in a glimpse, show the history of the visited spaces.