Zina Saro-Wiwa: The Illicit Gin Institute, Assembly #6
Commissioned and presented by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queens
March 31 2023, 7–10 pm
The event is free, registration opens 15 March, visit the Agnes website for more details
“…My Assemblies aim to rewire the social contract and are an opportunity to explore the very idea of ‘spirit’. It is social medicine.”
— Zina Saro-Wiwa
— Zina Saro-Wiwa
A social sculpture and a secular ritual that carries resonances of fellowship and solidarity, Zina Saro-Wiwa’s Assembly is a living, evolving performance piece created in collaboration with local audience-participants to share and express her findings on African sociality, botanicals, spirituality, and science. They make space for new stories to bubble forth from older forms and connect people, places and histories. This is the first major presentation of Saro-Wiwa’s work in Canada.
“Assemblies are portals where…flora is alive, says Zina Saro-Wiwa. “I am introducing a West African cultural approach to alcohol consumption which is ritual, medicinal, mindful and moderate. My Assemblies are an opportunity to explore the very idea of ‘spirit’. The history of distilled spirits is alchemical and to me occupies a very powerful nexus at which spirituality and science meet. In many ways I feel this illicit gin is the perfect vehicle to explore the place of spirits and spirituality in the natural world. And the events do feel spiritual but they’re also very warm, rigorous and engaging. It is social medicine.”
REGISTER HERE TO ATTEND
Zina Saro-Wiwa is a British-Nigerian artist who lives and works between Los Angeles, the United Kingdom, and Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Born in 1976 in the Niger Delta region to a family with roots in Ogoniland, she initially used her art to respond to her family history of activism in the region. Saro-Wiwa works in film and photography but also with sound, food and distillation. After working as a BBC producer, presenter and reporter for more than twelve years she turned her attention to her artistic practice.
Zina Saro-Wiwa is one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s Global Thinkers of 2016, recognized for her work in the Niger Delta. In April 2017 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Art. She has given talks and has shown works at biennales, museums and art fairs around the world including Tate Modern, Frieze and Basel Art Fairs and major public sites such as Times Square in Manhattan. Her work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Smithsonian Museum of African Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, among others. She recently gave the keynote lecture for Yale’s Black Environmentalism’s conference (2022) and is currently exhibiting in the 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala, India. A major solo exhibition of her work at the Pitt River Museum, Oxford opened in February 2023.
Agnes Etherington Art Centre
This March, Agnes hosts world-renowned Zina Saro-Wiwa as artist-in-residence. Other public-facing programs include a screening of Saro-Wiwa’s 2020 film Worrying The Mask: The Politics of Authenticity and Contemporaneity in the Worlds of African Art on 3 March, 7 pm at The Isabel Centre for the Performing Arts, an episode—or two— of Spirit Led, Saro-Wiwa’s podcast series, and other surprises yet to come! For more information, visit the Agnes website.
Curated by Emelie Chhangur, Qanita Lilla and Sebastian De Line
March 2023 will be a special month-long celebration of culture at the Hotel Wolfe Island! Stay tuned for more announcements — subscribe to our email list and follow us on social media for more.
