Emo de Medeiros: Chromatics

Chromatics is an exhibition by Emo de Medeiros grounded in the necessity of a radical fight against racism, “radical” meaning that the fight must also be symbolic and conceptual, aiming at destroying racialization mechanisms that create automatic thinking and a mainly subconscious linguistic “apartheid”.

The basis of the piece is a program randomly combining 200 three-to-five-letters most common nouns in the English language, thus generating 10 000 possible word couples. The program then randomly adds the words “black” and “white” thus generating 80 000 possible four words paragraphs or “stanzas”.

The viewers can observe the drastic change when “black” and “white” are randomly added.

The exhibition is manifested in a series of mirrors, paper works, textile works and a video.

Emo de Medeiros is a French-Beninese visual artist whose work encompasses a wide variety of media and interrogates the validity of given systems to inform and influence the ultra-contemporary world. So far this year he exhibited in Video Brazil and the Dakar Biennale where his work “)U(“, “‘A monumental arrangement of neons, surveillance cameras, screens and mirrors…” was noted by Philippe Dagen, veteran art critic for the French newspaper Le Monde as: “one of the most striking realisations at the Biennale”. In September, de Medeiros executed a new performance: “Ubi(s)”, at the Pompidou Centre, Paris. Later this Autumn he will participate to the Casablanca Biennale (Morocco) curated by Christine Eyene; Lagos Photo (Nigeria) and Cosmopolis Pompidou/MJAC in Chengdu (China).

As part of the VIP programme for 1:54, Emo de Medeiros and Christine Eyene will be in conversation this Saturday 6th October at 50 Golborne at the opening of de Medeiros’ new solo exhibition, ‘Chromatics’. RSVP

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