AXIS, Twin Rivers Kopje

EXHIBITION TEXT by Bruno Milambo

Twin Rivers Kopje is a significant Middle and Later Stone Age archaeological site located in South West Lusaka, Zambia. The site, which is nestled in an area believed to have once been an ancient lake spread across the Munali Mountains, Kafue floodplains, and stretching out as far as Itezhi Tezhi, according to farm owner Patrick Roberts, has been excavated on different occasions, resulting in research findings of human bones, ochre pigments, and mineral resources dating back over 200,000 years.

This exhibition situates Human intervention as the AXIS of the universe, centering human sensory and bodily experience in dialogue with the gaze of truth and how it translates to surfaces. Creating from the realm of deep play, questions of identity in the self, in relation to nature, gender, and subject, are confronted by shifting perspective from pointing to becoming, through the process of immersion into the source material. This allows for the work to be experienced as “active”, and not perceived as objects, transiently becoming a separation between production and creativity. By shifting the narrative from approaching the climate crisis as taking care of nature, to staying alive as humans by taking care of nature, we acknowledge the dichotomy and explore an interconnectedness between material and linguistics. This births an intuitive convention relating to the theories of Norwegian philosopher Arne Neass, and his principles of deep ecology with the idea on an expanded empathy, that which supersedes human ethic and moral acts of care towards the environment, instead giving credence to what he calls a deep joy. A humanistic ethic is an ethic which emphasizes the dignity and inherent value of all human beings.

Borrowing from the cyclical nature of trees and how they shade leafs and bark that transform into nutrients for the soil, that in turn nourishes the rejuvenation process in response to their movement and adaptation to environment, Darwin’s root brain hypothesis theorizes that trees have their brains in the soil and organs in the air, closely relating it to time and existentialism from a human perspective. There is a pedagogical approach to adopt from this by questioning what we can give to the earth to be returned to us in time? What affable ways of thinking, in extension to physical manifestations of care and empathy can we convey to the earth?

During her residency at LuCAC, Hanna has been exploring principles of her practice that are founded in similar revelations. Creating masks using materials like clay and tree bark from the site, a certain right of preservation for this indigenous knowledge informs her process, and supplements her ritualistic expressions of painting from on top of and underneath the canvas simultaneously, as opposed to painting from in front of the canvas. Consequently, she approaches her work not as representational but by carefully interacting with the source material from which she paints, portraying minimal focus on it as a subject, and instead emphasizing the juxtaposition of painting as both a deep human thinking process, as well as a commodity within society.

The opening culminated a pit firing of the clay masks created during Hanna’s residency as a right of preservation for indigenous knowledge, lending to the material culture of her environmental awareness. And featured Ludvig Uhlbors participating with 28 letters from Zambia.