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We’re on the cusp of Frieze week, the weekend before the whole circus really kicks in, we’re basking in the outrageous mid-Summer heat of an October weekend here in London, it isn’t right, it is a delight, surely this is not right? This is surely global warming, a warning, another one. This heat is more than just an Indian Summer as hundreds of art galleries ship in art and people from all over the globe. Over the last couple of years we’ve seen nothing more than tokenism in terms of Art and the participating galleries addressing the obvious climate crisis and the extremely overdue need to rethink the way the whole globe-trotting Frieze circus is run.
Before Frieze and everything else that is going be going on during the coming week consumes us, and for everything that is wrong with Frieze, I do, on the whole, I must confess, like the week and the buzz that flows around town.
Before frieze week consumes everything, there are a couple of shows that are worth more than a moment, two East London shows that are continuing through Frieze Week, one at NıCOLETTı and one at Soft Options just off the Hackney Road. More about the show at Soft options in a bit, first Josèfa Ntjam…
In Limestone Memories – un maquis sous les étoiles [a maquis under the stars], is Josèfa Ntjam’s second solo exhibition at NıCOLETTı – yes that’s how the gallery like to have their name written, I can go with that, they’ve more than earned the right to write their name in whatever way they wish, there’s been some impressive shows in their Vyner Street space over the last few years. Right now the main gallery room, the back room feels rather like a dark cave pulling you in (do like the way the curation here, the way the space is used and how the gallery is different every single time, there are some galleries who’s shows you just really look forward to going to)
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Josèfa Ntjam continues her exploration of outer space and the abyss as spaces of resistance. Evoking the atmosphere of a cavern with black walls and floor, the exhibition centres around Dislocations (2022), a 17 min film co-produced by Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. The film tells the story of Persona, a fictional character pursuing an initiatory journey from the internet to a cave floating in outer space amongst a constellation of asteroid-like shells and fossils – a rocky soft cave, both underwater and interstellar. Projected onto the cave’s walls, the memories of warriors, activists and family members who have fought for Cameroon’s independence progressively melt with Persona, whose humanoid body eventually dissolves into aqueous particles…
it isn’t really clear if we’re in an installation, if we’re here to sit on the deliciously inviting cushions to watch the film or if the richly coloured cushions are part of a not to be touched installation? I opt to stand and let the film and English subtitles flow. The film itself is in French, the fact that it is adds to the experience rather than distracts, the seventeen minutes certainly hold the viewer, demands you don’t step away. Films in art galleries can be uncomfortable, they can be detached, can;t i just watch this on YouTube later? not with this one, maybe because we’re in a very invited cave?
Establishing analogies between cosmic, geological and mental processes, Dislocations weaves references to biology, mythology and science-fiction to rework History from personal and minoritarian narratives. Throughout the film, Persona embodies powers of transformation, hybridity and reconfiguration of both individual and collective consciousness, excavating and (re)assembling the sometimes forgotten stories of oppression and emancipation that are nevertheless embedded in matter and mind.
So you have the rather enticing engrossing richness of the film, the warmth of the colour, the beauty of the cushions in the cave-like darkness, and then you start to look around and find the work hanging on the dark walls, the elegant sculpture, the suggestions in the shapes. You start to pick up on her subliminal hints via the pieces of text, a political undercurrent, a need to use her voice. Subtle, clever, never too obvious, extremely rewarding, intriguing, at times furiously gorgeous, certainly engaging, without having to shout…
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In Limestone Memories – un maquis sous les étoiles, Ntjam explores similar ideas through series of photomontages and sculptures forming a phantasmagorical environment inhabited by gigantic tentacles, glitching bubbles and termite mounds. The Deep & Memories (2022–23), for instance, is a series of Perspex sculptures with shapes suggestive of aquatic plants and animals, on which Ntjam included poetic texts evoking bodies turning into puddles and drops. Other works feature collages that conflate fragments of history, such as in The Deep & Memories (Maquisards, 2022), which blends portraits of Adama and Assa Traoré (who died in police custody in 2016) with archival images showing Cameroonian warriors posing with shotguns, together with photographs of Félix Moumié or Ernest Ouandié, leaders of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC).
Commissioned by the Centre Pompidou Metz for the exhibition A Gateway to Possible Worlds. Art & Science-fiction (2022–23), these works form, according to the artist, an ‘ecosystem of interconnected revolts and uprisings’, interweaving fictional elements with archival images to deconstruct the linear perception of history and establish connections between events that took place in apparently disparate temporalities and geographies…
There’s a lot here, there’s a lot to unpack in Josèfa Ntjam’s rewarding work.There’s a lot of questions from both the artist and the viewer, there’s a lot in the dark cave of a back room, without the film, there’s still a lot. There’s a lot to consider, a lot that challenges, you really should let her challenge you… (sw)
Ntjam is a member of the Paris-based art & research collective Black(s) to the Future
Nicoletti Contemporary. is found right in the middle of Vyner Street, the last gallery left on that one glorious street, 12a Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am – 6pm. The show runs until November 4th 2023. Do check the gallery website for extra opening hours during Frieze.
Nicoletti will also be presenting Josèfa Ntjam at Frieze this year.
Previously on these pages
ORGAN THING: Nana Wolke at NıCOLETTı, Wanda’s under the Westway, ultramarine tales of taxis and…
As always, do click on an image to see the whoel thing or to run the slide show…
THE ORGAN 
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