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Current Resident: Sep 1, 2022–Aug 31, 2023

OCA - Office for Contemporary Art Norway

Studio #220

Artist

Anawana Haloba

Anawana Haloba’s artistic practice is an ongoing investigation of societies’ positions within various political, social, economic, ideological, cultural, and post-independence frameworks. Haloba drafts poetry in the form of sketches for her work, from which she abstracts to performative-based artworks in moving image, installation, and sound. She constructs scenarios in which the material culture of any given location can be probed and reconsidered within the context of rapidly shifting contemporary subjectivities.

Anawana Haloba has exhibited work at Center Georges Pompidou, France; Biennale di Venezia, Italy; and Sao Paulo Biennial, Brazil, among others.

anawanahaloba.net

Events & Exhibitions

2023 Spring Open Studios

April 21–April 22, 2023

2022 Fall Open Studios

November 18–November 19, 2022

Confessions of a delusional dictator and a museum of guilt explores the pitfalls of post-independence development during the 60s-70s throughout to 80s, the rise and failure of African Socialism, the social and economic politics struggles and the stifling of freedom of speech (expression) assembly, Social, and economical exploitation it comprises of a safety bunker, or a contemplation of a fictional president modelled on my research. Inside the bunker is a marble confession box with a two-way video work where a delusional dictator is giving his contradictory confession in front of a female priest. Also found in the bunker is some kind of memorabilia collection from either material on victims of torture or merchandise confiscated from oppositional supporters to all other materials imagined.

Anawana Haloba, Confessions of a delusional dictator and a museum of guilt, 2013-2016, video installation

How to (re)pair my grandmother’s basket is an experimental opera by the contemporary visual artist Anawana Haloba, drawing from African philosophy and operatic traditions. The opera is grounded in the Ubuntu philosophy of encounter to create a non-hierarchical comparative method, by which to interrogate rootedness and empathy. Haloba’a opera is created and composed borrowing from operatic conventions, knowledges and sensibilities outside the European tradition, mainly from Southern Africa, such as Chiyabilo/Kuyabila and Budima from Zambia. The libretto of this experimental opera, scripted by Haloba, is a dialogue among non-gendered characters who transverse geographies, cultures, and societies, composed for these times. It engages with questions of environmental racism, the rise of nationalism in the western world, and the plight of immigrants. Her incandescent experimental libretto and composition is an extension of her doctoral exhibition at Bergen University and teaching practice, in particular a course she taught at KHiO University in Oslo, based on a comparative approach. (Re)pair opens many possible readings: repairing the basket as a new pairing of histories side-by-side, as much as the idea of recovery, or reparation (though the basket, or history, may not be ever retrievable).

Anawana Haloba, How To (RE)Pair My Grandmother's Basket, 2021-2022, sound and music installation, dimensions variable

A DRAGON KING IN SLEEPY PRIDE ROCK explores China’s presence in Africa (Zambia particularly), taking into consideration the historical, and present day, myths and facts. My want to research this theme is partly inspired by the religiously flared-up media declaring China’s “new inroads” without looking at its long history in Africa. Now having pointed that out, this project does not aim to engage China’s presence in Africa from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) through the last imperial dynasty of Qing (1644- 1912), a period that accounts for an overwhelming knowledge of Africa. Here rather, I am interested in exploring China’s modern relations with Africa commencing in the 1950s during the cold war era, and throughout the 60s/70s, examining its social and political implications. What did this solidarity or ‘friendship of economics’, whose core agenda was eradicating colonialism and forging a common front to safeguard sovereignty of emerging nations against cold war politics, mean to a newly independent Africa? is divided in three parts “a synchronised video/sound/Animation with the animation playing from 3 old television set (early 60s-70s model) with sound from headphones. An interactive piece of train rail piece of 2.8 cm in length that always triggers sound if rubbed with dry maize grain beneath it, as way to retell the stories of both the workers and witness (people that lived along the rail). There is a saying that says one can trace their journeys through a maize cob, it’s a game kids would play while eating fresh maize- eating the grain on a cob in way that you creates irregular lines. A series of drawing from the made by layering photographic images and then re-drawing over with an ink pencil. Each drawing goes with a text especially written for it. A wall (sound memory wall) with tiny 14 home-made speakers using calabashes, cables and speaker drives that play different sound from each of the 14 station along the Tazara railway. Above where the television will installed on a time-line map of the migration and also the railway map.

Anawana Haloba, A Dragon King in Sleepy Pride Rock, 2016-2020, film, sound, drawing, and installation

ISHALL CURE YOU WITH MY TONGUE is part of a larger installation work, Conversations with Stitched Up Lips and the second listening station. “Conversations with Stitched-Up Lips” was a “process exhibition” in which I compiled information from interviews I had with different thinkers, friends, readings and rewrote them in as conversations, and poems written by myself. The exhibition was intended to bring out a series of internal discussions of the mind, reflections, reactions and other poetic meanderings, embedded in the exercise I called “A Process of Becoming” dedicated to work of Frantz Fanon who is the main subject of my PhD research. Understanding the background, environment and heritage of Fanon was as crucial as the scriptwriting. With the recorded text, I included the ambient sounds of nature and music from Martinique. The viewer was invited to listen to fragments of text, noise and tones relating to trauma, healing and psychoanalysis via several sculptural audio stations.

Anawana Haloba, I Shall Cure You With My Tongue, 2018, sculptural and sound installation

Close-up is an installation with sound elements revolving around salt rocks that, over a period of time, undergo a process of liquefaction. It makes reference to the bodily fluids of humans, minerals found in landscapes and the historical significance of salt as a means of exchange. The melting and trickling of the salt is a slow, timed, and amplified process that ultimately leads to relief on the one hand and extinction on the other.

Anawana Haloba, Close UP, 2010-2016, sound installation

United States

Current Resident: Mar 1, 2023–May 31, 2023

Vision Fund

Studio #222

Artist

Shanekia McIntosh

Shanekia McIntosh is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on poetry. Her work explores the intersection of passivity and action, apathy and empathy, as well as capitalism’s dehumanizing capacities, with the goal of cultivating space for afro-futurism, empathetic political actions, and accessibility.

Shanekia has exhibited work at the New Museum, New York; Collar Works, New York; and Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, among others.

shanekiamcintosh.com

Events & Exhibitions

2023 Spring Open Studios

April 21–April 22, 2023

text installation installed on decal on storefront

Shanekia McIntosh, a poem, 2021, installation

concrete poem sculpture on repurposed tree stub with paper

Shanekia McIntosh, Hindsight Is Hindsight, 2020, sculpture

poet performing with musicians and video projections

Shanekia McIntosh, Call Me Ishmael - A Story of Exploitation, 2019, performance

Shanekia McIntosh, another line, 2021, installation

Residents from United States

Dana Robinson

United States

Vision Fund

Studio #304

Nathaniel Donnett

United States

Vision Fund

Studio #303

Hellen Ascoli

United States, Guatemala

Pollock-Krasner Foundation

Studio #302

United States, Guatemala

Current Resident: Jan 1, 2023–Jun 30, 2023

Pollock-Krasner Foundation

Studio #302

Artist

Hellen Ascoli

Hellen Ascoli creates multidisciplinary works that weave through memory and sensation. Working primarily with a backstrap loom, Ascoli situates herself within concepts of proprioception, affordances, and translation.

Hellen Ascoli has exhibited works at Art Pace, Texas; Contemporary Art Center, Ohio; and La Nueva Fàbrica, Guatemala, among others.

hellenascoli.com

Events & Exhibitions

2023 Spring Open Studios

April 21–April 22, 2023

Hellen Ascoli, The Corners Speak, 2022, collaboration with Karl Williamson, textile, sound and wood, 63 × 63 × 20 in. (160.02 × 160.02 × 50.8 cm)

E como leer sets up a E or comb warp to explore forms of writing and reading. This textile is activated by the viewer by running the crank and focusing in on the detail of the warp.

Hellen Ascoli, E como Leer, 2022, collaboration with Karl Williamson, textile and wood, 63 × 10 × 12 in. (160.02 × 25.4 × 30.48 cm)

As the pandemic hit in 2020, and I was stuggling to keep in contact with my family members and community from Guatemala, my friend and collaborator Negma Coy asked me via text message ¿Achike’ rub’anon ak’u’x?, meaning ¿How is your heart? in Kaqchikel.

Hellen Ascoli, ¿How is your heart?, 2021, textile and wood, 196 × 236 in. (497.84 × 599.44 cm)

As I began my research for CIEN TIERRAS, I read “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler, for the first time. As I was reading, listening to the news, living through lock-down, and constantly thinking of a past-present-future I was drawn to her ideas of God and Chang

Hellen Ascoli, We Shaped Soft Gods Here, 2021, collaboration with Karl Williamson, textile, wooden molds and kinetic components, 275 × 80 × 2 in. (698.5 × 203.2 × 5.08 cm)

Cien Tierras features different configurations of the Spanish root word ‘tierra’ rendered in brown and navy thread with red, blue, and yellow horizontal stripes. The brocaded text features poetic uses of literary wordplay devices including malapropism, orthography and idioms to demonstrate the pliability of language and the complexity of translation. The upper panel reads ‘en cielo’ or ‘in the sky’, which is abutted with the phrases ‘en tierro’ and ‘des tierro’ which translates to ‘in the land’ and ‘of the land’ respectively. However, when spoken sounds like ‘entierro’ resembles the Spanish word for burial or grave. ‘Destierro’ means to be pushed away or exiled. The lower panel depicts the phrase ‘sin tierra’ which literally means without land or landless. The title, ‘cien tierras’, connotes the xpression ‘one hundred lands,’ though tierra could also signify earth, ground or world.

Hellen Ascoli, Cien Tierras, 2021, textile and wood, 80 × 100 in. (203.2 × 254 cm)

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