For the second iteration of PRECIOUS OKOYOMON’S unique eighteen-month commission at the Aspen Art Museum, the artist has transformed the museum’s rooftop exhibition space to reflect the harshness of the barren winter. The project, organized by curator at large Claude Adjil, expands Okoyomon’s ongoing exploration of ecological materials and frameworks in their work and furthers their investigation into how the miracles and terrors of our natural world have been indexed into strict policies and racialized categories. Completely reimagined for each passing season, Okoyomon’s project makes use of a long timeline to highlight transformation and change. In the summer of 2021, Okoyomon collaborated with local growers to create a garden that celebrated the abundance and muta- bility of plant life, combining invasive species alongside those indig- enous to the region and presented a monumental concrete sculpture of a black angel resolute in prayer presiding over the garden with the mountains behind her. For winter, Okoyomon has planted evergreens among the now dormant plants that flourished in these same beds just months ago and installed a working oven in the place of the now-absent angel. Titled Shining like a black sun at the end of the world and made out of hemp, packed mud, and concrete, the oven, with a form modeled after traditional West African storehouses, will burn for 8 hours a day on Tuesdays and Sundays every week. It will also be at the center of dinners hosted by the museum for the community. Okoyomon continues a collaboration with the jazz musician Gio Escobar of the ensemble Standing On the Corner, who worked with the artist to record chaotic randomized symphony for the garden in the summer. Ice Words Ghost Appearance for Strings, Woodwind, Brass and Drum formally explores the cold desolation in sound. Finally, one new figure titled I saw nothing in the darkness but myself , acts as Egunguns, or watchmen of the night, mythological masked spirits in Yoruba culture that collectively protect against the incursions of evil.
speaking in tongues first that what caused the fire in our bloodstreams recirculating heart refined into ritual In the eye of the morning dreams for keeping and sharing There is a sacredness to everyday life Amniotic memory Give me the soft scent of isolated grief Spirit and survival A bruise Out of the thickness of the frost the veil was now thin Nothing would be named
the changing rate of the shift of air Fire began against the brimstone Ash rain snow Fragile world Our unbearable wrongness of being Sun blinding my eyes Rewind unparalleled catastrophe Continuously renewed
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