Before: Socialized, Circularized, Linearized, Artificialized, Corrupt Time

Excerpt from Exhibition Press Release:

Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom constructs an exhibition of four distinct chapters, producing an ever-evolving dialogue and curation of space. By alternating the different modes of making foundational to Boakye-Yiadom’s multidisciplinary practice – including print, found material, film, sound and performance – the mediums are in constant conversation with each other. Exploring at once a conflicting sense of expansiveness and confinement, they act as vehicles to delve into the instability innate within cultural production, using both a personal and public archive to do so.
Every two weeks a new chapter begins, a revision of space and the material that occupies it. Driven by research, the first instalment revolves around a video work; the second, a framed print and a vintage advertisement for Montego Bay, Jamaica; the third, a graphic print wallpaper of the Asian native Balltree (Calophyllum Inophyllum), photographed on a residency undertaken by Boakye-Yiadom in Italy; and the fourth, a montage of monitors, print and archival work.

Spanning all four chapters, but positioned differently for each, is the steadfast photograph of Michael Johnson’s historic gold shoes, worn during his 200m and 400m victory at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, USA. This iconic image is reimagined as a full stop to encourage the audience to look beneath the guise of familiarity and question what we can see beyond the gold shoes – Johnson’s gruelling training, his losses and failures in the lead up to that moment. The image is conceptualised and deconstructed rather than taken as gospel for any given reality, time or experience.
A five hour metamorphosing soundscape also spans the duration of the exhibition. Originally made for Before: Flight as part of Nocturnal Creatures, a live event held at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2019, this sound work is revisited and reworked through new instrumentation and introductions of live musicians: a trumpeter, a xylophonist, a drummer and a melodica player. With the ‘studio’ set up behind a curtain – which is either activated by the live happenings or enigmatically poised to host them – Boakye-Yiadom disrupts the relationship between viewer and viewed, and the expectations of bodies in certain spaces.