The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis
Xenogenesis brings together a selection of key works by the The Otolith Group, the London-based art collective consisting of Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun. This cross-section of works, created between 2011 and 2018, reflects the artists’ ongoing commitment to creating what they call ‘a science fiction of the present’ through the use of images, voices, sounds and performance. Suspended between fiction, poetry, documentary and theory, The Otolith Group’s post-cinematic films, high definition videos and multiple screen installations address the global crises of the Racial Capitalocene that have shaped contemporary planetary capitalism.
The title of the exhibition references the African-American science fiction novelist Octavia Butler’s legendary Xenogenesis trilogy which opens with Dawn (1987), continues with Adulthood Rites (1988) and concludes with Imago (1989). The term Xenogenesis conjoins the Greek prefix xenos meaning strange or alien with the suffix genesis meaning origin or generation. Butler’s neologism informs Eshun and Sagar’s longstanding preoccupation with the promise and threat of the idea of alien becoming.
The most recent work in Xenogenesis, O Horizon (2018), is a portrait of Visva Bharati University, which was established in 1919 in Santiniketan, West Bengal, by the polymath Rabindranath Tagore. Alongside Butler and Tagore, the music of the African-American avant-garde composer Julius Eastman, provides the raison d’etre for the installation The Third Part of the Third Measure (2017) dedicated by Sagar and Eshun to the memory of their friend Mark Fisher and the Movement for Black Lives.
Xenogenesis was first shown at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in May 2019, and was curated by Annie Fletcher. Its presentation in Sharjah is organised by Van Abbemuseum and Sharjah Art Foundation and co-curated by Annie Fletcher, Director, Irish Museum of Modern Art and Hoor Al Qasimi, Director, Sharjah Art Foundation. Original exhibition architecture designed by Diogo Passarinho Studio.
Xenogenesis was on view at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond (2020), Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge (2020), and Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne (2020) Following its presentation in Sharjah, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkove , Ljubljana in 2021/2022 (dates to be confirmed) and the Irish Museum for Modern Art, Dublin, in 2022.
The publication Xenogenesis: The Otolith Group, a polyphonic exploration of the work of the Otolith Group, will be launched in conjunction with the exhibition opening at Sharjah Art Foundation. Presenting all bodies of work contained in the exhibition, the publication presents materials and graphics from the artists’ broader practice and brings together important thinkers, scholars, art historians and writers from disparate fields including Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva, Annie Fletcher, Anselm Franke, Shanay Jhaveri, George E. Lewis, Mahan Moalemi, Fred Moten, Grant Watson, Vivian Ziherl and the late Mark Fisher. Edited by IMMA Director Annie Fletcher, the Otolith Group and Megs Morley, and designed by Luca Frei, Xenogenesis will be available in the United Arab Emirates exclusively at the Sharjah Art Shops alongside the exhibition opening on 13 November 2021.
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