Exhibition Catalogue:

What revelations await as we descend vulnerably into enigmatic allures and awe…underneath the surface?

These intertwined collages, these layers of selves and others across generations and decades, draw from ancestral patterns and memories. They hold space for flows of experience in the here and now. Chini ya Maji, Swahili for 'underwater,' reveals deep truths under the surface, rippling and straining with multiplicity – the versions of ourselves we reveal beneath the facades we present. These collages embody intertwined webs of experience, connecting us through striking similarities. Their geometric image-schemas reflect interconnections plumbed from the depths of remote yearnings and dimly recalled experiences, from the wellspring of what makes us who we are, together.

These patterned images, these familiar constellations of paper, rope, moss, and stones, spread tendrils through the space, complicating the room's geometry into organic flows. These many selves encounter the familiarity of others, creating spaces of exchange and encounter, sparking mutual understanding. They lightheartedly explore relationships, bringing us closer to our nature and sharing our questions.

These lyrical figurative arrangements, intense soundscape, and moody lighting transport us home, to a place of release from externally and arbitrarily imposed boundaries. Home is where we are, where we find ourselves in the joyous company of others. Strangers recall a feeling of familiarity found, lost, and found again. These collages draw us into unpredictable journeys through the damp, mossy woods of experiential knowledge, melting away surface distinctions. We recognize versions of ourselves in others and others in ourselves, abandoning distinctions and seeking fullness.

Embroidered schemas of generational shifts and gaps tell stories with simplicity or overwhelming detail, suspense, dread, ease, joy, or embarrassment. They line up our pasts, complicating our memories. Ribbons and threads of memory twist into images that could be us, moving like us. Though not us, in their familiar movements and glances, we quickly understand something about them, seeing a glimmer of ourselves.

We look through the kaleidoscopes of our futures into our present, turning the dial and shifting the shapes of our pasts as guides and filters on the moments we edge through. We line up our pasts, feeling the familiar threads of images in our hands. In their familiarity, we blend times seen and yet to be seen, determined, sizing up the images against the memories dancing before our eyes.

Text: Anita Di Bianco

Edited: Jordan Awori

Photographer: Johannes Berger

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Dedicated to Mutti (Sigrid Mathias)

Sound Art:

Audio 1: upstairs (Nairobi meets Frankfurt) - Listen here

Audio 2: downstairs (uneasy…mediation…sibling a letter) - Listen here