Jean-Ulrick D茅sert: Conspicuous Invisibility Works 1997鈥�2023
Jean-Ulrick D茅sert is the inaugural recipient of Wi Di Mimba Wi :: The AKB & SAVVY Contemporary Commission Prize. Jean-Ulrick D茅sert鈥檚 body of work is impressive in its breadth and ingenuity. His decades-long work in Germany has made and shaped spaces for crucial questions and practices. We acknowledge his ongoing practice and body of work with this award and the show entitled CONSPICUOUS INVISIBILITY. WORKS 1997鈥�2023:
This solo exhibition is one of the rare occasions that gather Jean-Ulrick D茅sert鈥檚 artistic and intellectual practice as it collides with his itineraries, biographies, and adventures in thought, feeling, and history. Charting a trajectory enlivened in diaspora and animated by the eros and pathos of race and ethnicity, the first monographic exhibition of D茅sert in Germany comprehends a structure of displacement, 鈥渦nvisibility,鈥� and shame in a selection of the artist鈥檚 creative output that he has produced since 1997. The show is abundantly delightful, confrontational, and almost shy 鈥� not all at once, but in a palpitating orchestration of storytelling and critique, humor and intelligence, or fabulation and investigation: as iridescent materials for making artistic positions visible. D茅sert calls it 鈥渃onspicuous invisibility.鈥�
CONSPICUOUS INVISIBILITY. WORKS 1997鈥�2023 features 鈥淭he Archive/ a work in progress,鈥� a new interactive commission using augmented reality to access colonial artifacts from the West African collection of the Ethnologisches Museum in Dahlem. Criss-crossing the impulse for opacity and transparency, D茅sert gives form to a theory of permanence and the task of presencing contaminated objects among objects in today鈥檚 discursive industry 鈥� deliberating on the ethico-political impact of decolonization in museology, art and knowledge production, and culture at large. 鈥淭he Archive/ a work in progress鈥� annotates impressive commitments, such as restitution and abolition, through personal, incidental encounters with intoxicating experiences of gold, smiles, fetishes, stares, kinks, laughter, and other pleasures from recreation or even public entertainment. In all angles, without touch or pressure, the force in D茅sert鈥檚 archival exposure reassembles how colonial bodies could emerge from current constellations of judgment and analysis and invite scales of poetics and visuality.
Jean-Ulrick D茅sert is the inaugural recipient of Wi Di Mimba Wi :: The AKB & SAVVY Contemporary Commission Prize. Jean-Ulrick D茅sert鈥檚 body of work is impressive in its breadth and ingenuity. His decades-long work in Germany has made and shaped spaces for crucial questions and practices. We acknowledge his ongoing practice and body of work with this award and the show entitled CONSPICUOUS INVISIBILITY. WORKS 1997鈥�2023:
This solo exhibition is one of the rare occasions that gather Jean-Ulrick D茅sert鈥檚 artistic and intellectual practice as it collides with his itineraries, biographies, and adventures in thought, feeling, and history. Charting a trajectory enlivened in diaspora and animated by the eros and pathos of race and ethnicity, the first monographic exhibition of D茅sert in Germany comprehends a structure of displacement, 鈥渦nvisibility,鈥� and shame in a selection of the artist鈥檚 creative output that he has produced since 1997. The show is abundantly delightful, confrontational, and almost shy 鈥� not all at once, but in a palpitating orchestration of storytelling and critique, humor and intelligence, or fabulation and investigation: as iridescent materials for making artistic positions visible. D茅sert calls it 鈥渃onspicuous invisibility.鈥�
CONSPICUOUS INVISIBILITY. WORKS 1997鈥�2023 features 鈥淭he Archive/ a work in progress,鈥� a new interactive commission using augmented reality to access colonial artifacts from the West African collection of the Ethnologisches Museum in Dahlem. Criss-crossing the impulse for opacity and transparency, D茅sert gives form to a theory of permanence and the task of presencing contaminated objects among objects in today鈥檚 discursive industry 鈥� deliberating on the ethico-political impact of decolonization in museology, art and knowledge production, and culture at large. 鈥淭he Archive/ a work in progress鈥� annotates impressive commitments, such as restitution and abolition, through personal, incidental encounters with intoxicating experiences of gold, smiles, fetishes, stares, kinks, laughter, and other pleasures from recreation or even public entertainment. In all angles, without touch or pressure, the force in D茅sert鈥檚 archival exposure reassembles how colonial bodies could emerge from current constellations of judgment and analysis and invite scales of poetics and visuality.
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Jean-Ulrick D茅sert is the inaugural recipient of Wi Di Mimba Wi :: The AKB & SAVVY Contemporary Commission Prize.
At SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 鈥楥onspicuous Invisibility鈥� examines the perceptions of identity, history and the African diaspora.
