Atiéna R. Kilfa

Cinque Terre

Primitive Tales
Atiéna R. Kilfa


30 September - 11 November 2023
CABINET London

If the primitive finds itself halted and repressed by violent categorisation, it also outgrows the experience of negation, of being stopped, of feeling out of place: stopping, doesn’t end there. It grows into a form of orientation, a narrative axis, from which the world unfolds. From there, disorientating how things are arranged from within, it reveals how familiar spaces can seem strange.

I want to invoke Bresson’s ejaculatory force of the eye, in continuing the trajectory of interrupted gestures that could not reach their final destinations, but which, in their ineffable expressions of wish or intention, give us a sense of orientation towards the future.


Installation views

Photography: Mark Blower

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Atiéna R. Kilfa
Primitive Tales 2023
Two-channel 4k video (colour, sound)
Continuous loop

Credits:
Models: Maria Hengge and Robbie Jr, Alison Kabuya and Barbara Klinger
Camera Operator: Dudu Quintanilha
First Assistant Camera: Shaun Motsi, Eva George Richardson McCrea
Production Assistant: Camille Clair
Hair and Makeup: Alyssa Lewandoski
Foley Sound Design: Julian Krause


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Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 1315 x 925 x 15 mm, Unique
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Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 2 parts, each 684 x 290 x 15 mm, Unique
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Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 684 x 290 x 15 mm, Unique
atienakilfacabinet

Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 1315 x 925 x 15 mm, Unique
atienakilfacabinet

Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 1315 x 925 x 15 mm, Unique
atienakilfacabinet

Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 1315 x 925 x 15 mm, Unique
atienakilfacabinet

Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 2 parts, each 684 x 290 x 15 mm, Unique
atienakilfacabinet

Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 2 parts, each 684 x 290 x 15 mm, Unique
atienakilfacabinet

Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 684 x 290 x 15 mm, Unique
atienakilfacabinet

Atiéna R. Kilfa Untitled 2023, Lacquer and acrylic paint, wood, pvc handle, 684 x 290 x 15 mm, Unique




The Unhomely
Camden Art Centre, London
27 January - 28 May 2023
   

Kilfa uses photography, sculpture, video and installation to explore personal and cultural memories that conflict and overlap. Her most recent work draws on her interest in the composition of models, dioramas, still lifes, and tableaux vivants, which she reinterprets as sites loaded with inherited narratives and social codes.

Located across Gallery 3 and the Reading Room, The Unhomely is comprised of a new video work integrated into an architectural structure. The work places the viewer within a movie scene, unfolding in an undisclosed staircase. This movement is perceived as a Huis Clos, a never-ending loop whereby the viewer encounters “architectural ghosts” that collapse the distinction between the real and the imagined, past and present.

To read the essay by Jenny Nachtigall published on the occasion of this exhibition please click here

“atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
  “atienacas” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, Camden Art Centre, London, 27 January - 28 May 2023
 


The Unhomely
KW Berlin
22 October 2022 – 15 January 2023
   

The exhibition The Unhomely at KW Institute for Contemporary Art marks the first institutional solo presentation by Atiéna R. Kilfa (b.1990, FR). Kilfa uses photography, sculpture, video, and installations to explore how personal and cultural memories tend to conflict and overlap. Her most recent work draws on her interest in the composition of models, dioramas, still lives, and tableaux vivants, which she sees as sites loaded with inherited narratives and social codes, opening them up for collective review.

The Unhomely stages a new video work alongside architectural fragments, transactional sound, and miniature sculpture, probing the memory of “home” as an impossible “virtual” architecture. Amidst an all-consuming installation that plays with scale and proportion, the eponymous video work, presented on an architectural stage, places the viewer behind the camera. The narrative of the video unfolds inside a staircase that is perceived as a Huis Clos, a never-ending loop, in which the viewer encounters “architectural ghosts”. These ghosts deviate from the stand-in human silhouettes that oftentimes populate contemporary architectural models, providing us with a sense of depth and scale. The figures in The Unhomely thus become actors themselves, pointing towards the daily lives of their imagined inhabitants, whether real or fictional, and uniting the past and the present.

Two further elements of the installation implicate the presence of the viewer in the production of the work. A scaled miniature of the film’s staircase represents an impossible replica, leaving the viewer with a confusing desire to compare their own position to that in the film and the model. A quotation from both the film and the model, the architectural stage used by Kilfa functions as a Foley instrument that reacts and reverberates to the movement of the audience, adding a sonic and spatial dimension to the experience of the work. Traditionally, Foley is a postproduction technique used to enhance the audio quality in moving images by overlaying synchronized studio recordings of everyday sounds. In Kilfa’s work, however, it serves to further heighten the viewer’s sense of complicity in the production of the work.

The exhibition The Unhomely by Atiéna R. Kilfa is co-produced in partnership with Camden Art Centre in London, where an iteration of the exhibition will be staged from 27 January to 26 March 2023.

pw-magazine.com/2022/atiena-r-kilfa-living-as-fiction

“atienakw” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, KW Berlin, 22 October 2022 – 15 January 2023
  “atienakw” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, KW Berlin, 22 October 2022 – 15 January 2023
  “atienakw” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, KW Berlin, 22 October 2022 – 15 January 2023
  “atienakw” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, KW Berlin, 22 October 2022 – 15 January 2023
  “atienakw” Atiéna R. Kilfa, The Unhomely, KW Berlin, 22 October 2022 – 15 January 2023