Scott Eric Williams, Open Pniel #1, 2019
Project description
“I pull the veil aside and step through its portals dreams rush to meet me.” – Sun Ra
If the door is open, will we walk in? If the power to change our reality and circumstances existed and the options and possibilities open to us, would we take them and would we be open to the dreams which may come?
Through wheatpaste, performance, public art, costume and video art, Scott Eric Williams asks “what is possible”? What else it there and are we brave enough, strong enough, creative enough to imagine and enter these alternate worlds, alternate possibilities?
Portals interrogates power and access in African cities and problematises notions of democracy, space, visibility and decolonization whilst proposing an alternate reality of our own shaping. We need only walk in.
Scott Eric Williams, Open Pniel #2, 2019
The doors in Portals are created through the medium of wheatpaste, the combination of archival images of doors, contemporary door shapes, doors which are collaged from other doors and gateways as well as other paper based materials. The fact that these doors are wheatpasted hints at analogue technologies, their depreciation, alternate uses and possible return.
The entry to these portals requires a process of democratisation, where the meek shall inherit the earth and the only point of access is through the most marginalised and “invisible” members of society. The exhibition thus requires us to interrogate what would necessitate our own emancipation and what would it take for us to step into the world we espouse, of equality, equity and justice?