Suntitled (2019)

Overview

Hannah Black and Ebba Fransén Waldhör have previously collaborated, along with musician Bonaventure, on multiple iterations of their performance work Anxietina (2018). Live performances, featuring the writings of Black and the music of Bonaventure within a spatial installation by Fransén Waldhör, have been presented at MoMA PS1, New York; Chisenhale and ICA, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva.

For SB14, Black and Fransén Waldhör have developed Suntitled (2019), a multimedia installation without music that they have described as a loose continuation of their earlier work. Building on the last iteration of Anxietina in Geneva, which explored catastrophe through an examination of war game materials and language influenced by disaster management, their SB14 commission envisions performance through the materialisation of time and without the physical presence of performers. On the rooftop of Bait Al Shamsi, the artists have created a free-standing, darkened structure with cut-out sections, which features a theatre of objects based on the workings of a sundial. At different points in the day, the series of amorphous sculptures acquire eyes and mouths, chronicling the rotation of the Earth on its own axis. At key moments, the sculptures sing, talk, express their longing to consume and be consumed by each other, and reflect on recent and ancient history as well as the forms they might take if they could leave this confined space.