Title:
Plateau: Sculptures

Year:
2021

Format:

“Open Shields”
Tinted bronze glass, gold, cloth, clay
120 x 40 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Yield”
Tinted bronze glass, gold, cloth, clay
120 x 40 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Gain”
Tinted bronze glass, gold, cloth, clay
120 x 40 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Burrow”
Tinted bronze glass, gold, cloth, clay
60 x 45 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Dearth”
Tinted bronze glass, gold, cloth, clay
60 x 45 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Reap”
Tinted bronze glass, gold, cloth, clay
60 x 45 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Till”
Tinted bronze glass, gold, cloth, clay
60 x 45 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Solid Ground”
Sand blasted tinted bronze glass, cloth, clay, tin
65 x 65 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Fertile Land”
Sand blasted tinted bronze glass, cloth, clay, tin
49,7 x 79,7 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Open Shields”
Sand blasted tinted bronze glass, cloth, clay, tin
87,8 x 40 x 1 cm (glass panel)

“Ground works”
Found cloth, Jos clay, hand woven baskets, tar, sand,
digitally printed plexiglass, tinted mirrors
dimensions variable

Vienna Secession, 2021 – “The earthy tones that characterize the film, recur in the design of the exhibition gallery and the staircase. Ashadu’s installation also encompasses two photographs reworked with clay and a series of sculptures made of clay – which the artist sourced from Jos, found clothes, tinted glass and raw tin. The engraved terms reflect the ambivalence of the workers’ strenuous and high-stake lives. Glass as a physical material, meanwhile, has immediate bearing on colonial power structures and mechanisms of visibility; as the artist observes: this juxtaposition of materials brings a very interesting balance between a sense of weightlessness and a grounding. The idea for glass comes from stories I was told during research in Jos. Back during colonial mining, apparently, the indigenes of the land weren’t familiar with glass or mirrors, and the colonizers would bring mirrors and glasses and set them down in the soil, so workers felt as if they were being watched. So glass was essentially used as a mechanism of control (…) it made me think of that vulnerability of being watched.”

In the series “Ground works”, a new reiteration of sculptures accompanies the exhibition at Produzentengalerie Hamburg, in association with Neue Kunst in Hamburg e.V. The group of sculptures – somehow totemic, are made from found clothes and tin and clay sourced from Jos. Sieves used for processing raw tin – made from woven baskets, sand and tar – ready-mades which the artist also brought back from Jos, form the bases of the sculptures.

Found clothes are woven around poles set in the middle of each sieve, which seem to emerge from the ground. The sculptures sit on coloured mirrored bases and Plexiglas digitally printed with research images and film stills – a hand hovering above a small pile of clay, skin melting into the landscape as a worker digs or the blue expanse of a sky partly framed by cactus. There is a residue of use or wear, suggested by the clothes caked in clay, evoking qualities of recalling, retention and remembering.