Opening, October 20, 2026, 6 pm
Exhibition, October 21 – December 4, 2026
Works by Eric Gyamfi, Abbey IT-A, kąrî’ kạchä seid’ōu
Under the title [Ominous Music Playing], the artist-curator Abbey IT-A brings together works by artists who employ moving images as a tool to reflect on narratives, time, and cultural memory. The exhibition is conceived as a deliberate shift in perception: from the dominant medium of painting to a polyphonic meshwork of poetry, artificial intelligence, or photography; from (self) representation to self-preservation in the realm of digital image production and circulation; from Europe’s perceived status as an intellectual center to one of Africa’s many artistic hubs—Ghana; and last but not least, a shift away from the shallow seductions of one-dimensional rhetorics and portrayals. [Ominous Music Playing] summons voices and imagery to Kunstraum Lakeside found at the supposed peripheries—not at the edges per se, but beyond a limited purview—demonstrating that it is precisely there where new aesthetic and intellectual impulses [continue to] emerge. The script serves here as a waypost: it points to the cinematic screenplay but also musical notation and literary annotation, a score-like structure in which seeing, hearing, and thinking intersect. In this scope resides the potential and space to rewrite, overlap, and re-rhythmize history. The exhibition becomes a resonant space. Encounters of sound, image, and text give rise to a dialogue between disciplines, generations, and geographic spaces, a poetic and political rewriting of scripts that examines how we hear [listen to] and see [coexist in] the world—and asks how we want to remember it. Moreover, the show prompts reflection on the visibility of power structures and the associated narratives. What impact do economic, cultural, or technological forces have on forms of representation? In this multiplicity of voices unfolds a critical yet sensual experience that encourages visitors to actively participate in the construction of meaning and memory.
Three works chart this resonant space at Kunstraum Lakeside: Shadows are Telegrams Awaiting Reply: 30x30x30… (2017) is a 30-stanza poem by kąrî’ kạchä seid’ōu that takes a critical and satirical look at racism, Black identity, self-perception through the eyes of others, and historical power relations. The modular stanzas serve as versatile building blocks that encourage viewers to realign perspectives and meanings. Eric Gyamfi’s Fixing Shadows – Julius and I (2023) pays a personal tribute to the composer and singer Julius Eastman. Thousands of cyanotypes combine portraits of the two artists into fictional permutations of their images. The work juxtaposes queer and Black forms of artistic practice against the backdrop of analog, digital, and AI-based image production conditions. DIY: How to Murder Your Darlings in Your Mother’s Kitchen (2021) by Abbey IT-A is a four-channel video installation featuring a shadowy figure who performs hair and skin care rituals. Oscillating between care and violence, the work investigates Black representation, time, and identity, relating them to the accelerated and highly stylized visual aesthetics of social media. All three works play with moments of revealing and hiding, knowing and sensing. Together, they offer different approaches to a common question: how do images, voices, and narratives come into being—and how can they be altered, overwritten, or recomposed?
Abbey IT-A (b. 1996 in Ghana) lives and works in Accra and Kumasi, Ghana.
www.itaabbey.com
