Comme les étoiles du ciel | Kévin-Adémọ́lá Ṣàngósànyà

The title of the installation comes from the Genesis: ‘And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven’ (26:4-5). This phrase came to the artist as he watched his grandfather’s funeral in Nigeria from Brazil. Despite the distance – both geographical and existential – that now separates them, the vital force of one now lives on in the other, and in all of his descendants now scattered across the globe. The link between Nigeria and Brazil, where Yorùbá¹ culture has been preserved and transformed, echoes the diasporic trajectories that led to this transatlantic scattering.

Comme les étoiles du ciel offers a reflection on àṣẹ² through the prism of parentage, childhood trauma and protection. Àṣẹ, which can be translated as ‘the force that enables things to happen’, is an energy that infuses matter: both the breath of life and the ability to act on the world.

This continuity of the flow of àṣẹ, passed down from generation to generation, is not only a source of wonder: it is also painful. The generational traumas inherent in filiation (grandfather, father, son) and paternal violence resonate with gestures of care and protection that are also passed down from father to son. Soaps, magic powders and ritual objects become the vectors of what the artist calls ‘African self-care’, which is both intimate and spiritual.

¹Cultural group from West Africa (originating mainly in present-day Nigeria) whose traditions, particularly religious ones, spread widely throughout the Americas as a result of the diasporas resulting from slavery.

²Term from the yorùbá religious tradition referring to the force that enables things to happen and bring about change, as well as the social authority that derives from this power.

Kévin-Adémọ́lá Ṣàngósànyà (France/Nigeria) is currently in residence through the 2-12 programme