From the Mundane to the Phantasmagoric
Peju Alatise's "O is the New +"
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Peju Alatise's "O is the New +"
The power of the intriguingly named "O is the new +" derives from its harmony of the concrete and the phantasmagoric, the mundane and the spectacular. A sequence of tires. Images of a crowed of people erupting from them, their arms thrown up in horror, their mouths open in anguish. The grim finality of the tableau is amplified by the tires being hung from the ceiling by chains, the image of hanging, of being held up by the metallic instruments, projecting connotations of dehumanization and death.
Why are human beings depicted in this work as projecting from instruments of locomotion, life being subordinated to non-life? Why are the people shown contorted in anguish? Is this a kind of punishment, perhaps of the kind Dante depicts through a visualization of Hell, in which groups of people are punished in ingenious ways that correspond to the sin that characterized their lives on Earth, a form of punishment that sheds light on the human condition in terms of the relationship between the sin, the illusion it embodies and the reality of human life in relation to ultimate value?
The suggestion of a broad range of possible significations is evoked by the spatial amplitude generated by this work, realized through the manner in which it shapes space. The sequence of tires hangs in space, each of them equidistant from one another, thereby suggesting the primary phenomenon of circular forms suspended in space in relation to each other, this being the celestial bodies. The work, therefore, mobilizes imagery through a number of methods ultimately subsumed by the image of motion- the primary image being that of the instruments of vehicular motion represented by tires, the image of humans erupting in anguish from those tires, placed in a circle around the entire rim of the tires, and the images generated by the hanging of the tires from the ceiling, aligned in a linear sequence creating visual motion from one end of the installation to the other and back again in a continuous progression, a visual motion correlative with the circular construction of each of the tires, a circular structure amplified by the visual effect generated by their sequential order.
This visual motion is amplified by the circular empty spaces at the centres of the tires, a line of sight within which we see a clump of human bodies slumped across the inner space of one of the tires, further amplifying the image of a hellish factory of human destruction, the figures unmoving unlike those wailing in contorted gestures on the other tires, the slumped figures perhaps delivered from their misery through the finality of death.
Here are her words: "This particular work was inspired by the four young men [ in Nigeria], students, tires hung around their necks and waists; they were burned and clobbered to death. They were innocent kids. Reminds me of the crucifix. The old fashioned way of killing thieves. The crucifix is one of the holiest symbols. It was inspired by torture and inhumanity. The bodies in holes. "When they are not putting them in holes, they put holes in them." The love of violence seemingly conjured by moral-judgment. They wear the crucifix ever so proudly around their neck. "Here is a new symbol for you to admonish. The "hole"symbol." There was no justice for the young men that died. 2012".
Emptiness as non-being. the hole as symbol of forms of human destruction of humans by humans through the bullet punching holes in flesh and bone or the petrol soaked tire as a space through which the circle of the vehicular instrument may rest on human shoulders enabling the combustion of the human form or the hole in the earth as the final resting place of the human figure after its time on the surface of the earth has been violently terminated. "When they are not putting them in holes, they put holes in them."
The Hole as Cognitive Metaphor
The alignment of the tires in this installation, in such a way that one may look through the space formed by the sequence of tires, also gives the installation the image of a telescope, a window for peering into realms of meaning in relation to the dreadful spectacle dramatized by the installation. The work may also suggest, therefore, the creation of ways of perception, of spatial and interpretative vantage points from which to view human suffering in relation to the wheels of being and becoming, the concrete, historical experience of human suffering suggested by the anguished figures protruding from the tires, and the frameworks, social, biological and metaphysical, that enable human suffering in the first place. The body grows old and dies and people kill each other through such inhumanities as inspired by this work. One way or another the inexorable wheels of time bring an end to human existence.
The artist has created a beautifully and horribly powerful image of near cosmic force inspired by an incident of dehumanization of the kind that marks much of human history.
The spatial character of the tires and the spatial relationships between them as they hang from the ceiling, amplify the motif of the circle, evoking the image of the revolutions of the celestial bodies in synchronous orbits in relation to each other, suggestive of the progression of the cosmos in terms of cosmic wheels, underlying metaphysical forces that enable being and becoming, the platform that enables existence and the progression represented by dissolution through destructive human action or the destructive actions of nature, both of which eventually lead the human body to a lifeless confinement in a hole in the ground, leaving the question of the ultimate destination of the human being an emptiness of meaning, a question never definitely answered.
The alignment of the tires in a manner that amplifies the visual impact of their empty centres generates a spatial centre akin to the revolutions of the celestial bodies around a solar centre, and, by implication, of cosmic progression around a metaphysical centre. The centre, in this instance, evoked by the circular centres of the tires, the evocative force of these amplified by their spatial and visual alignment with each other, generating an eloquent emptiness, an emptiness consonant with the various emptinesses that emerge at various points in the Paradox, Paradigms and Parasites series, a negative emptiness, evocative of destruction, yet also suggestive of insight in its use as a strategy of understanding by symbolizing, in an arresting image, recurrences in Nigerian experience in particular and human experience in general, ideas inspired by Peju Alatise's arresting use of the motif of the hole and her spell binding commentary on this in relation to " o is the new +" , adapting her summations in terms of perspectives drawn from various religious, philosophical and scientific cosmologies in relation to conceptions of emptiness.
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