The two pieces were conceived in dialogue with each other: the images that form the building blocks of the mural at the Art Institute are stills from Mascon. Both installations are presented as part of a series of exhibitions and events linked to Panafrica: Histories, Aesthetics, Politics, a multi-year research project at the Neubauer Collegium that is exploring the links between Pan-African politics and culture. Together the Otolith Group’s mural and film essay serve as a prelude to Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, a major exhibition opening December 15 at the Art Institute that was informed by the research project and curated by members of the research team.
Founded by Kodwo Eshun (b. 1966) and Anjalika Sagar (b. 1968) in London in 2002, the Otolith Group have gained international renown for their richly researched and densely textured film installations and performances, which frequently reference the global history of science fiction and the transnational legacies of historically overlooked critical theories. Their works have been commissioned and presented by museums, galleries, biennials, and foundations worldwide. Recent monographic exhibitions include: the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy (2024); Secession in Vienna (2022); the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin (2022); the Institute for Contemporary Art in Richmond, Virginia (2020); the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (2019), Kunsthall Bergen in Norway (2014); and MACBA in Barcelona (2011).
The artists describe Mascon as an “audiovisual investigation into the gestures, geometries, grammars, and geographies that compose the forms and forces of the films of Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty.” Mascon consists of a mosaic of images extracted from the works of these two Senegalese directors, prominent figures among a generation of African auteurs whose films explored the emancipatory movements that swept across the continent in the late 1950s and early ’60s. According to the Otolith Group, their homage to these filmmakers “summons the borderless imagination of the cine-Sahel,” amplifying and distilling Sembène’s and Mambéty’s favored motifs in order to elicit what American literary scholar Stephen Henderson termed “mascon” (shorthand for “a massive concentration of black experiential energy”).
