one gee in fog
Rue de Vermont 12, Geneva
"I watch the display windows and they watch me back. Shops, galleries, museums, markets. In a consumerist world, they project themselves as a place of ambition, that is, the best of the landscapes. A display window would perhaps be a simulacrum of a dream, a lifestyle ideal, a brief trail of victory. Perhaps the windows accommodate ephemeral monuments: brands and trends.
However, inside the windows of dozens of ethnographic museums in Europe, I observe the 'found objects' , I mean, the captured ones, the ones looted. The statuettes, masks, ritualistic garments, all non- European, displayed on mannequins, shelves and glass cases like the open pages of an exploratory Atlas Mundi. I am curious: what is it possible not to find around here?
On a rainy September day in Zurich, at the Rietberg Museum, I came across this Nkisi, this small statuette from the Songye region of Congo. Crafted in wood with such Strong curved and straight cutouts. And their eyes: their eyes pursue me in that small room of museum dim light. The Nkisi’s cowry eyes stare at me and challenge me...
– What can I do for you, my dear Nkisi? You are inside an insurmountable window.
Following the stare, I also challenge myself: I wish to make those eyes see the world at action. Two large eyes of an Nkisi are projected on a gallery window. They keep looking with deeply steady eyes at the street, the passers-by, the birds, the events of nature and the human events in that microcosm of the world. Geneva? Displaced from that display window, away from the ethnographic archives, they observe the light, the dark and the action!"
Yhuri is a visual artist and writer, born in Olaria (suburb of Rio de Janeiro), from an African-Brazilian family. Yhuri installations was developed during his residency in Switzerland during the autumn 2022.
ph.: Tara Ulmann