LB°18 — Artists

ARKIV

Hanni Kamaly

Hanni Kamaly (b. in Hedmark, 1988) is an artist based in Malmö.

Lanky sculptures with spindly legs and crooked silhouettes move through the rooms. They drag their legs behind them, and give in to their own weight as they convulse in a spontaneous, uncontrolled flow. The hard polished material recalls the architecture of confinement: gates, checkpoints, and enclosures for cattle. Their blunt and incomplete shapes give an at once threatening and fragile impression. “Colonialism equals thing-ification”, writes the poet Aimé Césaire in Discourse on Colonialism originally published in 1950. In her artistic practice, Kamaly is also concerned with the devaluation of the subject, and how representations of the human body are derived from colonial and racist oppression. The sculptures portray bodies that have transitioned into abstract objects, but still bear the marks of history – for it is history that has caused their transformation. They are each named after a particular person who fell victim to colonial violence at the hands of police, military or private individuals. Together, they form a kind of memorial to the violence, while also illustrating the colonial gaze that made that violence possible to begin with. Kamaly’s work makes visible the metamorphosis of dehumanisation; from person to threatening creature; from subject to object.

Hanni Kamaly (b. in Hedmark, 1988) is an artist based in Malmö.