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