It’s dark and dripping. The smell of chemical fumes hangs in the air.
Through manual processes, digital or chemical experiments, and performative gestures, Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah creates works and spaces that are at once clear, revealing, and ephemeral. In doing so, she questions the limits of the medium of photography both conceptually and through physical practice. Complete control and complete loss of control define the space of the possible. The lengthy process of developing analog photographs is not concealed here but is a visible part of the installation, inextricably linked to the works, their presentation, and ourselves. By exposing the technical nature of the developing process, we are witnesses—and thus part of the photographic reality.
The works created in the exhibition space, under its light, spatial, and institutional conditions, become part of a mourning process; Frankfurt becomes a place of loss. The incessant tears leave the lungs dry.
For the exhibition Corner Dry Lungs at ZOLLAMTMMK, Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah (b. 1990) is creating a new, expansive work.
The exhibition is supported by
You enter a dark room.
You smell chemicals in the air.
You hear dripping water.
The exhibition is about photography.
And the materials a photographer uses.
It is about the whole process involved.
And what can happen during the process of photography.
In the past photographers needed a roll of film in their camera.
When they took a photo light entered the camera onto the roll of film.
He then removed the roll of film and treated it with chemicals.
The photographer had to do this in a so-called Dark Room without light.
He then developed the photos in this Dark Room.
This type of photography is called analogue photography.
Today the photographer uses different technology.
People have always changed photos:
They made the photos clearer if something was unclear.
Sometimes the photos were changed by chance.
Because something went wrong in the dark room.
Sometimes photos change by themselves.
If they are left in the light they fade or become lighter.
Today you can change photos using the computer.
People make many of these changes.
Because they have an idea about a photo.
With a photo you can show feelings.
Or you can make people feel something.
This is what the artist wants to do.
Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah creates different spaces with her art.
Some of the spaces are very clear.
Some show things which were hidden before.
Sometimes the spaces fade after a short time.
The artist works with photography and its meaning.
She uses analogue photography to show:
What photography can do
And what it cannot do.
You see how photos are taken or changed.
Each time there is a connection between the photo and how it was taken.
The audience watches this happen.
They see what is real
And what has changed.
And the audience becomes a part of this world.
The exhibition in the ZOLLAMTMMK is called Corner Dry Lungs.
Corner Dry Lungs are words from a poem.
Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah wrote the poem herself.
She describes her feelings after her father died.
She describes her feelings in pictures.
She describes the great loss.
How her body felt while she was grieving for her father.
And the pain that she can hardly understand.
Her grief is so great that she cannot control her tears.
Her works of art become part of this grief.
In the exhibition she uses light and space to show this.
Her tears never stop.
And her lungs are dry.
Frankfurt becomes a place of grief and loss.
Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah was born in 1990.
Her latest work of art fills the whole exhibition hall.
She produced it especially for the ZOLLAMTMMK.
The exhibition is supported by
