ART CITIES:Los Angeles-Acaye Kerunen

Acaye Kerunen is known for her multidisciplinary practice encompassing visual art, curation, activism, acting, poetry, writing, and performance. Her works often meditate on the intricacies of natural systems and the impact of climate change, as well as enactments of labor and emancipation. Kerunen’s installations are forged from natural materials locally grown, harvested, dyed, and woven in Uganda, including banana fiber, raffia, reeds, and palm leaves.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Blum & Poe Gallery Archive

Through her work, Acaye Kerunen seeks to dismantle the hierarchies of fine art and craft, elevating women’s labor within socio-political systems. She often commissions primary women to create baskets, tablemats, winnowing trays, and other functional items before reimagining them as assemblage installations. Materiality is central to Kerunen’s artistic practice, and her mutable, expansive installations can be understood as living artworks. Through her intuitive use of material, color, and form, the artist creates enthralling biomorphic abstractions that envelop viewers into their folds. Acaye Kerunen presents her first solo presentation in the United States. This American debut follows her acclaimed showcase in Uganda’s inaugural national pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2022, which received the biennale jury Special Mention award for best national participation. Aligning the process of its own production with activism in the service of environmentalism, resistance to colonial and patriarchal tendencies, and the dismantling of hierarchies that devalue women’s labor, Kerunen’s work addresses the greater good from the moment it is conceptualized, before it is even presented in the exhibition space. Taking a stand against climate change, the artist’s process includes communal living and materials sourced in the wetlands of her motherland, Uganda. Employing techniques Kerunen learned from her mother and the matriarchs before her, the artist constructs her work from coils of woven natural fiber that are articulated by women in her community. Her use of natural fibers and dyes, locally sourced from the wetlands surrounding Nalubaale (Lake Victoria) as well as the Great Lakes Region, is testament to the artist’s strong relationship to the land and people of Uganda. Kerunen’s physical objects ground the artist’s oeuvre, serving as touchstones and points of entry for the viewer to investigate the other, more transitory portions of the artist’s work such as her activism, production as a form of social practice, and performance. In this exhibition, the artist uses recurrent imagery to drive home the messages of resistance that she has emphasized throughout her practice. The form of the butterfly is alluded to in “Nyakotha – The one who flys off” (2023). The butterfly’s process, beginning as a caterpillar, is one that Kerunen uses to convey sentiments of transformation and growth. In other sections of the exhibition, Kerunen similarly uses repeating tropes such as the colors black and white to indicate unified division and mappings of her own body to explore the emotions ingrained in her various stances. Beyond the physical object and its means of production, Kerunen also engages in time-based and intangible mediums to achieve her end. As part of this exhibition, the artist deploys the moving image. This video work, an intangible media that is a relatively new form within the plastic arts, illustrates the way Kerunen has prioritized elevating types of art making that challenge the traditional canon. Whether using techniques that had been pigeonholed as craft or creating work that is partially evanescent, Kerunen’s force for change rings true in her wide-ranging choice of media. Layer upon layer of consideration and meaning is embedded in every inch of this exhibition. Each object, activation, or communication has been imbued with heritage, sentiment, and hope for a better future—from sustainable materials to partial articulation by underserved communities, impactful compositions to intangible practices. All these messages commingle—unifying in a resounding chorus—to chip away at and call attention to social orders that perpetuate inequity.

Photo: Acaye Kerunen, Eeh eeh, 2021, Mixed media, 27 1/2 x 22 1/8 x 28 3/8 inches, © Acaye Kerunen, Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe Gallery

Info: Blum & Poe Gallery, 2727 South La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 1/7-12/8/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.blumandpoe.com/