an [ im ] material space rooted in martinique/wanakaera functioning as an artistic and cultural research lab engaging togetherness and experimental pedagogy


UPCOMING


Johanna and Esther Mirabel Villa Albertine 2026




















SIANO


Weaving through sonorities




Coming as an extension of the program SIANO, “Weaving through sonorities” is a group exhibition  manifested by :  

Phoebe Collings-James
Minia Biabiany
Tania Arancia Marie
Candice Zogo
Deanna Nelson-Mckie

Articulated as a discourse on culture, elevation and representation, this group exhibition  explores the landscape of Caribbean cultural phenomena in ( pre)-modernity whilst  approaching  Caribbean Sonorities by interiority.  
Drawn around Stuart Hall’s experiments on Cultural studies, this atmospheric landscape   seeks to understand how cultural artifacts reflect, call out and influence society but also how it can reinforce or challenge existing power structures, ideologies, and social representations. In fact, Stuart Hall’s work has always emphasised the importance of understanding culture as a tangible dynamic shaped by various social, political, and historical forces.
As an occasion to discuss the significance of materiality, literature, visual art, sound, and somatic languages in the context of Cultural Studies, this momentum also acknowledged the concept of presence through the sonic. Indeed, these  artworks are a manifestation and an anthem to Caribbean heritage and diversity. This well thought-out symbiose also provided a chance for an open dialogue on the global and local interactions within and between Caribbean islands, the tensions that co-exist inside the communities and towards the western world. This encounter of artists-researchers coming from distinct insular environments is an open window to discuss the connectivity, disparities, and shared experiences whilst delving into the core concept of sonorities, bringing essentials questions on: how sonorities can be manifested through artifacts and how can they be discussed in a context of cultural identity? What can be defined as sonic; and how can we respond to the sonic through materiality ? And finally, how does the concept of sonorities participate in the existing conversation on identity as a not-fixed essence ?

Thanks to a generous loan from Iniva [Institute of International Visual Arts], this exhibition brought together valuable resources for attendees. This provided a space for them to interact and engage thematically with archival material from the Stuart Hall Library collection. Our gratitude also extends to Nomadic Site, founded by Joel Costa, Olavo Costa and Henrique J. Paris, whose work materialized in the form of the bookshelf. This was a direct response to the themes defined in the exhibition, namely of interiority (intrapersonal and collective), tangibility, and the notion of identities as non-fixed entities.
Plus, intentionally the curatorial text was translated in english in Martinican creole/Palé matinitjé by curator Adama Keïta.

Curated by Adama Keïta
10 - 27 April 2024 at V.O Curations - 56 Conduit Street, London, W1S 2YZ, Documentation by Jiehao Zheng


CANDICE ZOGO MVOA

Candice Zogo Mvoa’s installation, Le Meuble à Musique, is a reconstruction of a safe place through which the artist found refuge at different moments in her life. This space-time is both a practical and a reading experience, allowing one to sit on the ground and scrutinising the insight of the furniture that contains years of memories, materialised in the form of a zine and a CD.

Candice narrates different life stages spent crossing and vagabonding in the Atlantic in search of a home. This body of work manifests the concept of migration through music, sacred memories, and a child’s nostalgia. This sonic and visual journey is drawn around three main thoughts: The dreamed homeland; life in the homeland; and the concept of exile. It traces the evolution of a fragmented identity, with a body that constantly wanders and a spirit that remains stuck in nostalgia; the story of a child’s soul following the sun, in search of an anchor.

Documentation of Candice Zogo Mvoa by Sarah Louis-Michel

As a beloved child of Kaloukaera, “the butterfly island”, and the village of Ndon, Candice Zogo Mvoa is in the midst of uncovering the mysteries that inhabit beings and worlds. 
She traces the threads of her ancestors' memories to find answers to the questions that sway this world, while expressing and learning to narrate these through words and images.



DEANNA NELSON-MCKIE

Black Existence is an ongoing project by artist and researcher, Deanna Nelson-Mckie, that explores black existence in relation to functional objects like instruments. Here she questions melanin’s effects and the possibilities of how the Diaspora absorbs and experiences sound as melanin-dominant people. She narrates this while thinking about the relation to our internal and external experience with these functional objects. Deanna takes into account instruments, music, and sound, all of which act as a predominant part of our identity and culture within the Black diaspora. 

She draws upon black scholarly research, citing Dr. T. Owens and Dr. Richard D. King, who have studied melanin alongside original instruments of Africa and the Caribbean, alongside interrogating print techniques and materials found in the Caribbean. In doing so, Deanna brings this exploration to the forefront by expressing this through “artefacts” inspired by Caribbean instruments as well as research and video montage.Deanna Nelson-Mckie is a multidisciplinary artist based in London. Her practice delves into often rare Black diasporic histories, cultures, and black scholarly theories. She does so by frequently referencing and exploring archives focused on black histories, black scholar lectures, and books. 
Deanna tends to express these themes through the lens of “artefacts” using a range of materials, print techniques as well as research, and archival montages. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Textile Design from Central Saint Martins (UAL) in 2022.



MINIA BIABIANY

Pawòl Sé Van, created by Minia Biabiany in 2020, explores the question of listening to the wind and the hurricane in a territory whose soils are heavily damaged by the persistent ecological and political consequences of the plantation economy and slavery. It also addresses the ongoing contamination of the ecosystem through the use of the pesticide chlordécone starting from the 1970s in Guadeloupe.Minia Biabiany (born in Guadeloupe, 1988) works and lives in Guadeloupe. In her practice, Minia observes how the perception of the body is entangled with the perception of space, land, and History. Mainly in installations and videos, she convoques the gestures of weaving by creating poetical and political narratives linked with self-understanding and healing. She explores the possibility of an enunciation out of the dominant colonial storytelling, particularly in the context of Guadeloupe, looking at the consequences of the French assimilation in the relations between the people, the land, and the plants. 

Minia Biabiany initiated the artistic and pedagogical collective project “Semillero Caribe” in 2016 in Mexico City and continues to explore the deconstruction of narratives with the sensations of the body and concepts from Caribbean authors with the experimental platform, “Doukou”.





PHOEBE COLLINGS-JAMES

Primordial Soup is the sonic manifestation of a feeling of melancholia, in this sound experiment featuring Amanada Khiri. Here, Phoebe Collings-James evokes a missed, dreamed, and (un)known Jamaica. Articulated as an open invitation to listen to a place where they feel both like a visitor and a native, the sounds envelop, transporting you to a paradigm caught between the colonial past and the present, between the echoes of Britain and the rhythms of Jamaica. Adele’s voice plays in the bus, intertwining with the chatter: a reminder of the questionable cultural exchange that transcends oceans.
At their aunt Ellen’s house, the voices of their great aunts resonate and these discreetly recorded conversations, serve as an homage to lives lived and lost.

The tangible nature of time becomes palpable, emphasising the importance of preserving personal archives. Nylon netting adds layers of symbolism to the piece, drawing on the tension – the tension between synthetic and organic, and between confinement and freedom. These ropes and nets bind the sounds and the gesture, creating a map of fugitivity, tracing the intricate paths of trade and migration. It resembles tension and resistance.

Primordial Soup sits at the intersection of identity, the sonic and the concept of belonging, an ephemeral material manifestation where memories, whispers, and the art of paying attention to sound collide.

Phoebe Collings-James is a black British artist. Their work is an exploration of self, living interconnections and all forms of media which throws light on a continued postcolonial unease. 
Phoebe Collings-James’ work often eludes linear retellings of stories. Instead, their work functions as “emotional detritus”: they speak of knowledge of feelings, the debris of violence, language, and desire which are inherent to living and surviving within hostile environments.







TANIA ARANCIA MARIE

Sou - Fwans (2024) was inspired by Tania Arancia Marie’s childhood memories, more precisely the ones from the lyannaj politik (‘political gathering’ in Guadeloupean creole). At the age of 5, Tania used to go with her mother to the strikes of 2009 in Guadeloupe.La gwadloup sé tan nou, made by the LKP collective, continues to resonate with Tania. Expressing the social and historical context of Guadeloupe,  la gwadloup sé tan nou was sung by thousands of Guadeloupeans. La gwadloup sé tan nou’ is both a testimony to Tania and to Guadeloupeans. 

Through a handmade tapestry rug linked to its research notebook, Tania wanted to express the hopelessness of Caribbean societies. Thus, “Sou fwans” becomes the materialisation of an open wound. While narrating the events of  2009, Tania also draws a parallel with the massacre of May 1967 in Guadeloupe, where the working-class were protesting for their rights and were the target of a bloody repression from the police. Tania observed that many guadeloupean songs express social struggles but also present a sense of hope in the context of hopelessness, lèspwa adan dézèspwa, a notion she decided to narrates in her archive research journal that come with abstract forms, personal archives, poems, and presents these sonic materials as a catalyst force of lyannaj.
Tania Arancia Marie is a textile artist born in Baie - Mahault (Guadeloupe) in 2002. She moved to Paris in 2020 to study textile at École Duperré. While learning the art of weaving on a manual loom, she developed her own unique way of combining colours and threads to create intimate fabrics that evoke members of her family. She also uses other mediums such as collage and writing to express her nostalgia and observations related to the land where she was born and raised.

Exploring the intersection of personal and collective histories, she fills her pieces with subtle symbols of cultural significance. Tania is particularly interested in the cultural significance of accessories. After graduating in June 2023, she felt the need to delve into the history of her Guadeloupe and enrolled on a Master’s program in history, heritage, and civilisation of the Antilles and Guyana at the University of the Antilles in Martinique.




NOMADIC SITE

In response to key concepts such as interiority (intrapersonal and collective), tangibility and the faculty of identities as not-fixed entities present in ‘Weaving through Sonorities’ curatorial proposal by Adama Keïta — Nomadic Site has designed a bookshelf that will be extending to the group exhibition at V.O Curations inviting interactions from the public as the furniture piece shelters materials loaned by INIVA from their wonderful collection selected by Henrique J. Paris, sprawling important works in the fields of visual arts, material culture, social politics, and cultural studies etc.


Nomadic Site is an interdisciplinary project founded by Joel Costa, Olavo Costa and Henrique J. Paris combining design theory and spatial critical practice, experimenting with visual communications to immerse world-building, shape, and object-making methods in inquiry to Afrocentric narratives.