Listen, How Quickly Your Heart is Beating In Me
2023, ruminants’ organs tanned with cashew extracts, cashew juice, calabash containers; installation, variable dimensions
in collaboration with Ebenezer Boamah of the KNUST Department of Indigenous Art and Technology DIAT (Kumasi, Ghana)
The work is part of a series dedicated to the organic library of the cashew. Based on an etymological suggestion, cashew juice, obtained from the waste parts of the industrial processing of the fruit, has been used for tanning the internal ruminants’ organs. These breathe thanks to the fermentation gas emitted by the juice stored in the calabash bottles attached to them.
Exhibition
The Legend of Cashew-head Persons, 2023, Former FORIG, KNUST, Kumasi (Ghana), curated by Zoe KɔKɔɔ
Atiāa Duase. A-signifying Allegory, 2023, Department of Animal Science and Technology, KNUST, Kumasi (Ghana), curated by Zoe KɔKɔɔ
Description
Two wooden seats with flip-open desks host and are part of the sculptural installation ‘Listen, How Quickly Your Heart is Beating In Me’[1]. Following the etymology suggestion that came from the description of the cashew apple taste – as tannin – and the procedure of preserving the skin and transforming it into leather – to tan – the artwork takes the appearance of a knowledge machine, led by the chemical process of fermentation and conservation.
In collaboration with Ebenezer Boamah, at the Leather Section of the KNUST Department of Indigenous Art and Technologies, internal organs of small ruminants and a cow have been tanned. The artwork experiments with unconventional materials to allow the breath of fermented cashew juice contained into calabash bottles to expand.
[1] From Wislawa Szymborska’s poem, Any Case
Image Credits
Category
- Collage, Installation
