ART CITIES:Maastricht-Kahlil Joseph

Kahlil Joseph keeps a determinedly low personal profile, preferring that his work does the talking for him. His body of work is somewhere between music videos and short films. In music circles, he is best known for producing pieces that violate just about every rule of the music video: There are no choreographed dance sequences, no jiggling backup dancers, no literal interpretation of the lyrics. Instead, there is simply a mood and worlds where strange things happen.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Bonnefantenmuseum Archive

The exhibition “NEW SUNS” by Kahlil Joseph comprises room-sized multidimensional film installations, complemented by the work of artists like Arthur Jafa, Noah Davis and Henry Taylor, to whom Joseph feels closely related. The title of the exhibition is based on an epigram from a never completed book by the Afro-American science-fiction writer Octavia Butler that spoke very deeply to Joseph, capturing the cosmic tension between optimism and pessimism, and the possibility of actually breaking through this deep psychic impasse into something new, quite wonderfully. Joseph is showing “The Philosopher”, a new autonomous film work that has not been seen before. The other works of the exhibition are: “Until the Quiet Comes” (2012), “m.A.A.d.” (2014), “Wildcat (Aunt Janet)” (2016), “Wizard of the Upper Amazon” (2016), ”AliceTM (You don’t even have to think about it)” (2016) and “Black Mary” (2017). “Until the Quiet Comes” (2012), is an arresting, visually sensuous portrait of life in one of LA’s most well-known housing apartment complex, Nickerson Gardens, with strong relationship to African cosmology. The oblique narrative created by this film sequence underlines how closely death dwells with life, and tragedy with ecstatic joy, under the constant reminder of police helicopters as ubiquitous as the summer sky over the complex. Formerly known as Wildcat, the majority African-American community of Grayson, Oklahoma, has a longstanding legacy of cowboy culture that dates back to the earliest years of the 20^th Century. “Wildcat “captures the rodeo lifestyle of real Grayson residents, while inserting dreamlike visions of a young girl clad in white. She embodies Aunt Janet, one of the founders of the Grayson rodeo, who died shortly before the film’s release. Director Kahlil Joseph says that Wildcat is “an experiment inspired by the composition and performance of jazz music”. Its non-narrative form allows for a fluid experience that takes the viewer from barrel racing and bull riding, to drives along countryside vistas and small town gatherings. Kahlil Joseph’s film “Wizard of the Upper Amazon”, is a dreamlike impression of Henry Taylor’s encounter with Bob Marley after a Marley’s concert in 25/11/1979 at the Santa Barbara County Bowl, as he recounted it to Joseph decades later. Joseph’s recreation of this moment, however referential to the particular details of Taylor’s memory, deftly interweaves film, performance, sound and installation into a surreal experience that penetrates the ethereal nature of memory itself. So much so, that when I entered the guarded room of the installation on the eve of the opening reception, I had no idea that I would become captive to the hallucinatory experience within.

Info: Bonnefantenmuseum, Avenue Ceramique 250, Maastricht, Duration: 1/12/17-25/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.bonnefanten.nl