By
Tajudeen Sowole
From the communication
essence of sculpture, a Burundi-born artist, Serge Alain Nitegeka takes the
functionality to viewer’s participatory realm with his choice of site-specific
medium. Nitegeka's work, currently showing in a group art exhibition at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD),
U.S is monitored via email chat with the artist.
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Installation, Configuration in Black by Serge Alain Nitegeka
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Apparently, Nitegeka is taking full advantage
of the widening window provided by contemporaneity, even in a global art space
that is collapsing barriers through
flood of imagery on the Internet. For his installations and sculptures, functionality,
he explains, is a target. Visitors to the SCAD exhibition who may want to have
interactive experience with Nitegeka's sculptures and installations would have
the novelty of sharing the same space with the works, physically. "The
spectator’s involvement- action of walking and being in the space of the
sculpture or installation functions to complete the work," says Nitegeka
who is one of the few artists of African descents sharing the same space with
other international artists in recent times. "The spectator becomes the
performer- acting out an experience or constructing one."
Other
artists showing at the SCAD's yearly deFINE
ART till July 3, 2015 are, Michael Lin, Nari Ward and
SCAD alumnus Caomin Xie, Ryoji Ikeda and Istanbul-based artistic duo
:mental KLINIK. Also exhibiting is
a 2015 honoree of US State Department Medial of Arts, Xu Bing, who will have a
major solo exhibition titled, Things
Are Not What They First Appear at
the SCAD Museum of Art/
Beyond the aesthetics and dimensionality of
sculpture, Nitegeka has a futuristic perspective. "My vision for sculpture is that it has
to be something confronted, not just looked at- that sculpture could be a
bodily experience that evokes those experiences already had and provoke new
ones."
In thematic context, movement of displaced
persons is one of the artist's areas of interest in the group show. "I am
fascinated by the mechanics of fleeing- how people behave, how they deal with
the chaos of fleeing; for example: evacuating loved ones, sourcing and
transportation of food, water, firewood and valuables, resting and the
transformation of a given space to shelter and the consequential erection of a
refugee camp." One of his works titled Structural-Response
II depicts the dilemma of emergency situations that breed management of displaced
persons. In the work – viewed via the Internet, Nitegeka distills art content
that probes the pattern in which refugees and asylum seekers disturb spaces
that offer transitory point of relief.
Dissecting the effect of displaced persons on
the environment they occupy, the artist who is currently based in Johannesburg,
South Africa traces the spontaneity of most similar movements of people to
desperation for survival. "The manner in which the refugees and asylum
seekers deal with found space emanates from fundamental primal and survival
strategies that are ambiguously harmonious, conflicting, haphazard, calculated
and spontaneous." He notes how they
determine the use of spaces "that are negotiated on the lines of
efficiency and necessity."
Nitegeka's thoughts on displaced persons' use
of space as a transit goes beyond the usual suspects caused by civil unrests in
Africa or natural disasters in Asia. In fact, natural disaster like hurricane
in the U.S is also on his mind, building the body of works. "The
transformation of spaces by this group auto replays, once more, the
conventional imagery of refugees in stadiums, community halls, schools and
churches that the media has accustomed to the world. Among the examples: the
occupation of the Louisiana Superdome by victims of hurricane Katrina in New
Orleans, US, 2005; or the Zimbabwean economic refugees/asylum seekers/ migrants
who took shelter at the Central Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg,
South Africa, between 2008 and 2011."
In contemporary context of art of African
origin showing in a space shared by artists of other cultures, the blurring of
individual native African contents is growing, particularly in artists of
Nitegeka generation. But faintly, his installation titled Configuration in Black, appears loaded with spirituality of life,
suggesting a native or cultural perspective to the issue of challenging ‘destiny’.
A text explains his thought on the site-specific installation, noting how the
work "invites viewers to decide their own passage through the space."
Other features of the event, according to the
organisers include Bing’s "1st
Class" (2011), a seminal work from the Tobacco series, employing more than
500,000 cigarettes in the monumental depiction of a tiger-skin rug; Ward’s
work “We The People” illustrate the opening declaration in the U.S.
Constitution with found and repurposed items including shoelaces that allude to
the phrase “to pull yourself up by your bootstraps; and Xie’s spiritual
abstract paintings such as “Brahma #1” will ponder the magnitude of the
universe.
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