Masquerading Pavilions and Asafo Flags: Na Chainkua Reindorf and Simone Leigh
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Na Chainkua Reindorf, Lara: Mind Your Own, 2021–22. Image courtesy of the artist.
Artist and Dissolve contributor Na Chainkua Reindorf represented Ghana in last summer’s Venice Biennale as part of the exhibition Black Star – The Museum as Freedom. Her installation transformed the architecture of the pavilion into a mythic garment of glass and plastic beads, fiberglass, and steel cabling, weaving together West African masquerade traditions with concepts of bodily autonomy and adornment. In a related gesture, artist Simone Leigh disguised the US pavilion’s neoclassical columns and brick façade in a hybrid form of architecture-as-garment based in the traditions of Guinean ritual dress and the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931. In combination, the two artists highlight the critical and ambiguous functions of masquerade to tackle issues of authority, sovereignty, myth, and scale.
Read the essay at the link below:
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