Julianknxx
with Inês Costa
‘… [my work] looks at the body, engaging with the relationship between the idea of the black psyche, the black body and how we exist within the city of London specifically … Looking at different stressors that affect people that live in cities, specifically black and brown people.’
Listen to the full interview here:
My name is Julianknxx, I’m a poet and artist, and my practice crosses the boundaries of written word, installation, music and visual art. Most of my work engages with personal histories, looking at oral stories and histories, things around me, at movement and migration. Home is a very important theme in my work. Movement and lineage, in the sense of my personal family migration and how we’ve moved through the world. I also think about my position, my location right now in England, London. I’m trying to interrogate: what does it mean to be here? What does it mean to make work and be alive right now? These are the things that I’m trying to meditate on, or I guess explore or ask questions about.
What are you showing as part of The London Open 2022?
I’m creating a body of work called Black Corporeal, which is three films and a collection of poems. For this show, it’s going to be Breathing by Numbers (2022). It looks at the body, engaging with the relationship between the idea of the black psyche, the black body and how we exist within the city of London specifically. There is this idea that we’ve moved to ‘make a better life for ourselves’, but there are things holding us back. The work looks at different stressors that affect black and brown people who live in cities, specifically air pollution, racism and their lived environments.
Music and costume play a big role in your films. Could you tell us about the relationship between these elements?
If you’re opening up a poem and you’re using cinema as a form to show work, for me it’s not enough to not think about what people are wearing, about what the body is doing in that space. Rather, to present oneself, the subject or presenting who I’m showing, is important. I work with the theme of choirs and a group of people in my work, so the idea of a chorus is important. If they are these in-between people, how do you present them? I think about what they would wear if they’re neither present in this physical time nor in the past? How do you dress them? That becomes a big part of it. Sound, the idea of music is important. Back home, when you tell a story, it comes with a level of rhythm and musicality, often done with drums at a wedding or a community event. In my work, when I’m presenting this language or presenting these forms, how can music elevate what I’m trying to say? How is music affecting the body, to enhance the feeling of what I’m trying to present? Music plays the role of pushing this language for me; what I can’t articulate — music helps me with that
Work in the exhibition:
Black Corporeal (Breathing by Numbers), 2022
4k film
15:50 mins
Commissioned by Brixton House
Julianknxx (b. 1987, Freetown, Sierra Leone)
2012 BA (Hons) Creative Industries Management, Coventry University
Selected exhibitions, screenings and performances: Air, Utah Museum of Fine Arts (2022); Lux, 180 The Strand, London (2021); In Praise of Still Boys, 180 The Strand, London (2021); Nocturnal Creatures, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2021); The View From There, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2021); Contra La Raza (Against Race), Matadero, Madrid (2021); Roots & Roads, Franklin Street Works, Stamford (2020); In Praise of Still Boys, Now Gallery, London (2020); Theaster Gates: Black Image Corporation, The Store, 180 The Strand, Prada Mode, London (2019)
