Visibly Absent: Atonement for Our Transgressions, by Akuzuru

At the core of Galvanize is "Visibly Absent", a series of nine artists' projects. This is the fifth in a series of notes on each artist and his or her project.



Part of artist Akuzuru's sculptural installation Tapia/Flood II at CCA7 in 2005. Photo by Aldwin Sin Pang


Bio: Akuzuru was born in Trinidad and studied fashion and textile design in London and Zaria, Nigeria. She has had nine solo exhibitions in Trinidad and Tobago, the UK, Nigeria, and South Africa; most recently, Tapia/Flood II, a large sculptural installation work at two sites, one indoors and one outdoors, in Port of Spain. She has also participated in many group shows. She was an artist-in-residence at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg in 2002 and at the Braziers International Artists' Workshop in Oxfordshire in 2004. She currently lives and works in Trinidad.

Statement: My practice as an inter-disciplinary artist is a multi-dimensional venture. The surrounding natural environment forms part of my concerns with space and its multi-sociological effects on the human-phenomena, thereby transcending this concept onto the universal platform. This deals with human encroachment on a natural bio-topography and how this has affected and effected the evolvement of the environment in which we live.

Over a twenty-year period, my explorations have tethered on the brink and beyond the stringent confines of the regimentation of conventional "fine art". The work itself is non-compartmentalised. It is neither conceptual nor representational, sculptural nor painting, drawing nor dance nor sound. It is a convergence of all of these and none.

For the past few years, I have been building a series of architectural structures which have their foundations in "primordial" village dwellings of ancient nations and cultures. By situating these structures and other organic forms in the contemporary urban setting, I seek to reconnect and reintroduce the natural environment to humanity's consciousness.

Atonement for Our Transgressions: I seek to bring the inside out. That is to say, for a de-spirited people this work will serve as a third eye to aid in that reconnecting to self. Nature informs this premise, as it has always informed my practice.

I would like to continue the venture of connecting the interior space of a building to the natural environment. This is about space reclaiming its space, turning a building inside out. It is literally a changing of one's skin, one's house. An architectonic element persists here, as I want to engage an interiority which is seldom exposed. This elusive interiority will be exposed through my continual investigations into the "clothesline" aesthetic. The installation will be a large intimidating form or a series of forms to be hung on a "clothesline" in the natural environment.


Atonement for Our Trangressions will run from 29 September to 11 October, 2006, at a location in Port of Spain which will be announced shortly.