Identity does not draw from a single root; rather, its roots intertwine in encounters with others.” (1)
Édouard Glissant

Emmanuel Tussore’s recent artistic works have repeatedly explored the theme of ghostly absence and processes of disappearance. He has developed motifs that probe the fragilities, vulnerabilities, and sufferings to which both human and non-human life are exposed. The threats and dangers themselves remain hidden and rather in a state of imaginative suspension, as do the living beings, which are either represented through ephemeral figures or only hinted at in a fragmented manner. Humans, thus, do not emerge as the center around which everything on the planet revolves, yet, for the artist paradoxically everything revolves around the social. In his recent sculptural works, materiality and its archiving qualities have taken on central significance, serving as a medium to explore the material traces that reveal life’s ruptures. The family as a social unit and the house as (micro)habitat play a crucial role in these reflections. 

In his current exhibition entitled ‘When the Sun Goes Down’, Emmanuel further develops these aspects, while also emphasizing how his own connection with Senegal and the evolving relationships from this place have profoundly shaped his artistic practice. 

The exhibition’s title unveils an associative framework for a pluriverse of symbolic meanings, depending on one’s own positionality: as a romantic metaphor, as a transition between life stages, a sign of farewell, or as a contemplative time for meditation and spiritual rituals. In everyday life, the evening hours—likely everywhere in the world—are a time when all kinds of communities are activated. Phenomenologically, sunset signifies the natural transition from day to night, serving as an intermediate phase. It undermines the abrupt separation of these two realms, instead emphasizing the fluidity of transition and highlighting the interconnectedness of light and darkness, the visible and the invisible .(2)

There are two overarching aspects within the multi-layered exhibition, through which the interrelational in Emmanuel’s works can be understood: (1) dwelling, in its broader meaning as a way of life, and (2) the concept of planetary or cosmological thinking, referring to a perspective that views the entire planet as an interconnected and complex system. (3)

The wall text 'Il est parti à l’aube' serves as a starting point and an echo in both spatial directions of the exhibition. It remains unclear whether this inscription is an announcement, or a murmur brought to light. The first reference of the inscription pertains to a recurring theme in Emmanuel's work: the exploration of migration, which he revisits with new facets in the installation ‘Rose des vents’ and the diptych ‘Aïd Mubarak’. In many West African families, migration and the departure of a family member to Europe or the US are familiar yet seldom verbalized events. Depending on how we engage with the news on the wall, one interpretation could be that the person eludes visibility as a form of counterculture against border regimes and their inhumanity (4). This inevitably raises a critical question: who, by contrast, is granted safety and visibility for voyaging in the light of day? The Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe writes in his essay 'Bodies and Borders'(5) about migration: “To be alive, or to survive, is more and more co-terminus with the capacity to move.” Familial geographies, spanning multiple continents, reflect not only established translocal ways of life but also international travel restrictions and the resulting perilous routes—across the Sahara, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and beyond.

The installation 'Rose des vents', a flower-shaped assemblage of food plates from Mauritania, placed in the desert sand, seems to suggest that life in vulnerable regions is not only to be understood in terms of the fugitive, but also through the capacity to create new worlds (without downplaying the ecological challenges). The idea of the blooming desert is in fact a compass when it comes to the acknowledgment of millennia-old experiences, resilience, and dynamics that have long been embedded in the Sahel as a dynamic contact zone (6). Drawing on geographer Diana Davis's writings, the flower challenges a (post)colonial perception of arid landscapes as empty wastelands by portraying them as habitats for resilient and thriving vegetation. Davis explains: “Many perennial plants, such as trees and shrubs, have various adaptations that enable them to survive and even flourish by remaining dormant as seeds in the soil, awaiting the next rain.” (7)

During the Muslim Ramadan, gathering at sunset for dinner takes on a profound spiritual significance. The earthly products and the shared breaking of the fast are imbued with divine power and reverence. In Emmanuel's photographs ‘Aïd Mubarak', the shared plate becomes the centerpiece of the circular seating arrangement on a mat on the floor, as is customary in West African tradition. In the silent choreography of hands moving over the plate, a network of social roles, values, and acts of care emerges. The plate becomes a cosmology of the home—a home sustained by the collective. Cooking and eating are intrinsically linked to well-being and food-justice. To ensure the habitability of a place and the well-being of everyone, it is necessary to start from a shared limited space such as the family plate.

Animistic traditions, like those still alive in Senegal, often conceive of relational worlds. Activist and political scientist Naomi Klein indicated more generally that indigenous ontologies organize life differently, as “systems that insist that humans must think seven generations in the future; must be not only good citizens but also good ancestors; must take no more than they need and give back to the land in order to protect and augment the cycles of regeneration."(8)  One can find references in Emmanuel’s sculpture of a pirogue, carved from a single tree and supported by numerous paddles, resembling a millipede. The sculpture embodies the idea that the protective structure is sustained only through collective effort. The sketch-like architectural studies with their vertical emphasis on connecting the earthly and the celestial, seem further to transculturally translate Senegalese philosopher Felwine Sarr's explanation of a West African cosmology: in this view, humans are seen as symbolic operators who bridge heaven and earth and bear the responsibility for restoration and repair.(9) The shapes of the sanctuaries appear in sudden flashes of light from the darkness of the night.

In a second layer of meaning the wall text “Il est parti a l’aube” may correspond to the series 'Corps 12'. The work is an intimate exploration of a personal fracture and, in many respects, a way of situating oneself. A densely woven shell of root fibers from the resilient medicinal plant sarsaparilla tenderly and protectively encases the imagined body of the artist's father, who tragically died in a plane crash. This cocoon-like sculptural object, oscillating between a sarcophagus and a weaver bird's nest, evokes numerous associations related to sheltering and metamorphoses. In the broader context of the exhibition, with the figure of the pirogue and the topos of the sea, it also opens up to notions of crossings to arrive at new shores. It becomes the centerpiece of a process of mourning and regeneration through artistic practice, with the roots for the sculpture being unearthed from the father's garden, and the artist becoming an archaeologist of his own heritage during this exhumation. 

Another part of the series focuses on objects that belonged to the father and were carried by him at the time of his death.(10)  The endeavor of reanimating those stored objects was undertaken during a period when the artist was on his own journey to becoming a father. In an extensive photographic endeavor, the items have been captured in front of a mirror in over a thousand images to approach the essence of absence of the parental figure. The mirror allows in a simple artisanal manner a symmetrical reflection of the object, generating its double or “clone”. By merging images of the objects with its reflection, they magically form new entities, symbolically restoring a sense of wholeness to the objects—a metaphor for healing and reconnection. Printed on porcelain medallions, the once intangible presence finds a precious, material trace and a renewed existence. In contrast, the accompanying animated video work, also derived from the photographs, emphasizes the notion of interconnectedness by suggesting the dissolution of physical matter into a cellular sphere, further exploring themes of unity and transformation.

The peaceful murmur of the ocean in the video ‘Mer sauvage’ and the earth-connecting placenta in the printed image ‘Family Tree’ reinforce the concept of intertwining present and absent family members into a transgenerational and spiritual bond. In this context, the X-ray-like depiction of the placenta of the artist’s own child becomes a primal source for the family cosmology and, through its abstraction, transforms into a primordial tree as the source of life. The metabolic relationship between mother and baby, mediated by the umbilical cord, involves nourishment, oxygen delivery, and waste elimination, while also serving as a repository of genetic identity. One might also relate it to the image of Gaia or the terre mère.

What becomes evident, particularly in ‘Corps 12’ but also throughout the exhibition, is that the multiple materials not only serve as significant carriers of a relation to the world, but the gestures involved in their manipulation—such as weaving, assembling, building, animating and sketching—also emerge as embodied strategies in searching for repair in its broadest sense.

Agnès Stillger
Août 2024

NOTES

[1] Glissant, Édouard (2005): Kultur und Identität. Ansätze zu einer Poetik der Vielheit. Heidelberg, S.19

[2] The multiple interpretative possibilities of the sunset's symbolic meanings can also be read as an indication that the exhibition represents a space where attributions overlap transculturally. In this sense, it functions as a kind of translation space

[3] Accordingly, the artist dedicated each of the exhibition rooms to one of the Earths elements

[4] Bona, Dénètem Touam (2022): Fugitive, where are you running? Cambridge/Hoboken: Polity Press

[5] Mbembe, Achille (2019): Bodies as Borders. In: From the European South, 4, p.5-18, online verfügbar unter: https://www.fesjournal.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2.Mbembe.pdf

[6] Peule communities, whose culture Emmanuel Tussore engages with in the works 'Aid Mubarak' and 'Rose des vents' are one of the largest nomadic societies on the African continent.

[7] Davis, Diana K. (2016): The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge. Massachusetts: MIT Press, p.13

[8] Klein, Naomi (2016): Let them drown. The Violence of Othering in a Warming World. In: London Review of Books, Vol.38, No 11, 2.6.2016, online: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown

[9] Sarr, Felwine (2020): Afrotopia (quoted from the German edition). Bonn, p.13

[10] The items have been carried by the father at the time of his death in 2001, including his wallet, mobile phone and identity card. The were found on his body or in close proximity in the aircraft wreckage during the investigation to confirm the identity of the corps which was assigned in an alienating number 12 (as Emmanuel explained in our conversations)