2018.03 COASTAL IMAGINARY

The East African coast only works as mythology. Constructing a neat definition of it implies an expansion of geography—it means one must cross the water, or at least imagine what lies beyond the horizon. But this is not a clear answer. Rather, it is an invitation to wander, to make a fantasy of the intimate alleyways and squares that make up Lamu and the Island of Mozambique, to speculate on how these places came to be. Coastal Imaginary is an origin story, except we begin in the present.

This exhibition draws on time, space, and memory, which we take to be shifting and interchangeable. The layering of text, images, video, and sound are the timeline that ground our myth-making, implying the near and the distant, and recalling Susan Sontag when she wrote, “photographs turn the present into the past.”

Kahira Ngige, Loyiso Qaqane, Nerali Patel