Mahindi Choma #1

by Adam Yawe

Adam Yawe's artwork "Mahindi Choma #1" was presented within the exhibition "The Cosmologies of Objects" at Villa 102 – KfW Stiftung in Frankfurt.

 

As part of the TALKING OBJECTS residency programme, Adam Yawe has created a mesmerising virtual 3D object that draws on a multitude of references. Of particular importance were an incense burner by the influential Senegalese writer Mariama Ba (1929–1981) and a carved seat from the Ashanti Empire (1680–1896; today Ghana) from the collection of the Musée Théodore Monod, Dakar. In his work, Yawe combines these two West African objects with artefacts from contemporary Kenyan everyday culture. In Yawe's video work, the three bright yellow corncobs are the first thing that catch the eye. Laid out like incense sticks, they are stuck in a concrete construction whose shape is reminiscent of both the Ashanti seat and the Kenyan water system Inverted Block Drainage (IBD). The digital object evokes the smell of roasted corn, Mahindi Choma, a popular snack of colonial origin. Today omnipresent on Nairobi's streets, corn came to Kenya through transatlantic trade relations and displaced local crops. Using corn as an example, Yawe points to transcultural interdependencies and their effects. With his work, Yawe associatively creates new references and questions when (cultural) exchange becomes appropriation and when creative re-creation is the result.

Mahindi Choma #1,2024, Kanga Video Collage with soundtrack by Adam Yawe. Image Credits: Installation view „Talking Objects. The Cosmologies of Objects” at KfW Stiftung, Villa 102, 2024, © KfW Stiftung, Photos: Jens Gerber