R/Evolution

Jenny Mustill / Ghada Chamma

17 November - 4 December 2022

R/EVOLUTION is part of an ongoing series of conversations at Koop Projects between an African artist (Ghada Chamma) and an artist based in Sussex (Jenny Mustill).

On December 17, 2010 in Tunisia, a young street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, who had been repeatedly harassed by police demanding bribes, doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire in protest against government corruption. His personal and individual action ignited waves of demonstrations across Tunisia (the Jasmine Revolution) and inspired similar uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East as people demanded jobs, better living conditions and greater freedoms. The ripple effects of the “Arab Spring” continue to be felt today, including in Iran,
where water shortages and blackouts fuelled protests in 2021 and the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody two months ago lead to mass demonstrations resulting in the deaths of at least 326 protestors and the detention of over 15,800 people.

On the 23 January 2020 the city of Wuhan in China was cut off from the rest of the country by the Chinese Government. A week later, the WHO declared a global pandemic and by the end of March 2020 most countries around the world had implemented strict lockdown measures and the 24 hour news cycle was reporting daily death tolls from all around the world. The Tunisian Revolution and global lockdowns are two historic events that lead both Jenny Mustill and Ghada Chamma in a new artistic direction. Driven by the desire to withdraw from the outside world in an attempt to transcend the anguish of death and limits of the body, both artists turned inwards to interior psychological landscapes.

Both Ghada and Jenny found their meditation practice beginning to fuse directly with their art. The artworks on display here are explorations of the space between the conscious and unconscious; they are expressions of memory, imagination and movement. For Jenny Mustill, accessing this liminal space became a ritual and a place of solace that manifested as figures dancing and taking flight. Whilst Ghada Chamma describes
the blending of her meditation practice with her art as a kind of “sensory nomadism” in which the body becomes its own poetic material.

There is a way between voice and presence, where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens. - Rumi