È WÁARÍ - KARP




KAMINA, TOGO / 2023
Kamina Art Research Platform (KARP)

Exhibition
Residency
Photography



LINK TO PHOTO SERIES ︎





During my residency in Kamina, I embarked on a project to explore the concept of the triptych, not only in the number of masks but also through three collages and three series of photographs. Harnessing the raw materials sourced from the site itself and engaging with the individuals who inhabit it, I breathed new life into discarded elements, weaving together a collage rich in history, texture, and human expression.

It was within the storied confines of the former antenna guardhouse, now a symbol of transition between past and present, interior and exterior, that I unveiled my work. Here, amidst the echoes of bygone eras, I chose this a space of transition (between outside and inside) to showcase my art, bridging the gap between what once was and what stands before us now.


Kamina (the city of tales and masks), a former German military base in central Togo, where Africa’s largest radio antenna was built to contact Berlin during the Nazi invasion. The tower was built with the sweat of enslaved Togolese on their own land. Many dead, their culture extorted, their clothes ripped, their rights taken away simply to build a means of communication from land, at the time, part of Germany.

Following the French invasion, the Germans decided to blow up the tower, i.e., the three concrete bases that held the antenna at its center. Despite the tower’s demise, the bases (of the now-defunct antenna) are still there, a reminder of the different political regimes imposed on the Togolese people.

This series of self-portraits is a retranscription of the different historical layers with which the Togolese are confronted, and of their many mixed races.

Three masks, three colors, three elements: fire, earth and water (the three elements that enabled the now destroyed antenna to function).

Three skins, three concrete bases, three identities: Togo, France and Germany.

Three loincloths, three languages, three alloys: wood, raffia and plaster.

Like the Togolese and their pasts, I explore the streets of Kamina, a meeting point with historical traces embedded in the soil, landscape and people; to highlight the question of heritage, of the history of a nation where certain narratives have been imposed on them. These nameless faces, these masks without tribes or identity, are the ghosts of histories that are blurred today: in Kamina, the colonial crossroad.
           



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