the untitled

Onyedika Chuke was born in Nigeria, he lives and works in New York. The exhibition the untitled is the result of a one-month residency in Clermont-Ferrand, in partnership with the organization Artistes en Résidence. It is part of a series of works initiated by Onyedika Chuke in 2011, entitled The Forever Museum. By combining found objects, borrowed images, and sculptures, mostly made out of plaster, the artist composes installations inspired by the museum vocabulary to better disrupt it.

the untitled is a work based on internet sourced documents that redistribute images and theories of political revolutions, riots and warfare. Interests stemming from the artist’s travels in Libya in 2011 during the Tunisian Revolution, which eventually led to what would be known as Jasmine Spring or Arab Spring. These incidents, originally meant as revolutions of the people have since been co-opted, made into wars and prompts for neo-colonial politics, ushering in a period of images pertaining to the disruption of the social sphere and intimately, the destruction of the human body. the untitled attempts to archive the events as re-distributed by the mega-archive of the internet, news feeds and first-hand encounters.

Onyedika Chuke questions the role of art in a broader ideological system. The artist connects not only the phenomena of domination between men, but also their relationship to nature. He appropriates images from common repertoires, both ancient and contemporary, to reveal how strongly they permeate our view of the world and of history, and thus establish a critical distance from them.

in partnership with Artistes en résidence, Clermont-Ferrand and Residency Unlimited, New York

Assistants: Armance Rougiron and Myriam Urvoaz

Thanks to: ESACM, Emma Pavoni, Hélène Sauvageot, Bruno Silva