INVITATION

The Long Afternoon of Art
Thomias Radin Rhizome: Time of Revelation

with Thomias Radin, Jumoke Adeyanju and Stephan Klee
Easy coming and going for a whole afternoon.

Activities
3 pm – Guided tour through the exhibition with Stephan Klee

4 p.m. – DJ set by Jumoke Adeyanju

5 pm – “Fluidity in Music, Movement, Expression and Identity –
The work of Thomias Radin and Édouard Glissant’s concept of culture”
An open discussion about the exhibition
with Thomias Radin, Jumoke Adeyanju and Stephan Klee

6 p.m. – Final tones

…

The rhythm sets the impulse – The impulse triggers the movement – The movement in space shapes the sensory perception – The perception becomes an experience – And from the experience arises the need for a new expression: Be this expression a brushstroke on the canvas, another dance step in the collective, the dialog with other people or even the construction of a musical instrument for rhythmic impulses.
The works of Thomias Radin – born in 1993 in Les Abymes on the French-Caribbean Antilles island of Guadeloupe – are collages of cultural references in many forms of expression, with which he explores questions of identity and knowledge, also with regard to philosophical discourse. He combines contemporary dance, painting, film, social-performative happenings and sculpture, including instrument making. His works are in constant exchange with each other, yet remain independent. They are connected by a network of variable relations in movement, form, material and meaning, which regenerates itself ever more extensively in cycles of artistic action without ever losing its fundamental ties.

…

We would like to invite you to the first Long Afternoon of Art on the first floor of the Old Town Hall in Göttingen.
On the occasion of the exhibition of Thomias Radin Rhizome: Time of Revelation, the artist, our invited luminary Jumoke Adeyanju and the curator Stephan Klee will be your hosts in the exhibition from 3 to 8 pm. There will be a small programme,
which will not only focus on the theoretical background of the works, but will also bring the artist’s multimedia cosmos to life with music, dance, film and many works of art.

Thomias Radin, Jumoke Adeyanju and Stephan Klee will be on site the whole time.
Drinks and snacks will be served, admission is free and we look forward to seeing you there.

Event photo: RIVÂL – a joint film by Thomias Radin, Alex Brack, Mats Meisen, Kartago Film, 2023, Photography by Emmet Holmes-Boyes

Jumoke Adeyanju is an interdisciplinary multilingual writer, curator and dancer. Under her alias mokeyanju, she occasionally performs as a vinyl selector and aspiring sound artist. Jumoke is the founder of The Poetry Meets Series [est. 2014], co-curator of Sensitivities of Dance and hosts her radio show Sauti ya àkókò as well as the weekly
Breakfast Show on Refuge Worldwide.

Her multidimensional sound, words and movement art has been commissioned by MARKK Museum Hamburg, NCAI Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, Dak’Art Biennale 2022, LagosPhoto 2022, Arthouse Foundation Lagos, AAF African Artists Foundation Lagos, Image Afrique Basel, African Crossroads Mombasa, CUNY NYC, Kölnischer Kunstverein and Deutschlandfunk Kulturs Klangkunst amongst others.

She has presented her artistic works at international literary festivals performing in English, German, Kiswahili and Yorùbá. Jumoke’s poetry and translation work was published as part of the anthology “Kontinentaldrift: Das Schwarze Europa” (ed. Fiston Mwanza Mujila) in 2021 and “The 1619 Project” by Nikole Hannah-Jones. In 2022, her first Sci-Fi short story “77. Weltstille”, was published in the anthology “Kollaps und Hope Porn: 13 Zukunftsaussichten” by Maro Verlag.

As an all-round-artist, Jumoke’s approach touches on topics like diaspora nostalgia, memory, spiritual liminal spaces, sonic tonalities, and how various elements of expressive art forms interrelate and incorporate the potential to (re-)create moments of reviving other or displaced selves.

Recently, Jumoke Adeyanju exhibited her sound-based ‘dreams’ research project OTA – outreaching transfigurative alterations at Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute in Kenya.

The Annual Programme 2024
TERRA DIASPORA – CHANGING WORLDS

TERRA DIASPORA is the leitmotif of the Kunstverein Göttingen 2024–2025. In the face of fundamental upheavals in the coexistence of nature and mankind, TERRA DIASPORA stands for a world on the move; for a terrain that is becoming increasingly alien to its inhabitants, and for an earth on which people are becoming foreign bodies. It is an earth in a foreign territory, a terra diaspora.
The first part of the 2024 programme series is called TERRA DIASPORA – WELTEN WANDELN and shows artists, who create new worlds between rational reality, dream, and fantasy. Dubious of a purely functional picture of reality and often affected by family experiences of migration, the exhibited artists connect the accustomed with the new, combine facts with the fantastic and create their own identities out of old stories and new experiences. Worlds are made visible which stem from our roots and emerge when we wander the earth. The 2024-2025 annual programme, developed by curator Stephan Klee and the participating artists, will be overseen by him over the next two years.

In late summer 2024, we are particularly pleased to present the interdisciplinary artist Thomias Radin at the third solo exhibition of the year. His oeuvre moves fluidly between dance, painting, sculpture and film and brings attention to the cultural roots and world concepts of an Afro-Caribbean diaspora, in which a spiritual network of signs, movement and music permeates, transforms, and enriches the questionable principles of Western cultural hegemony.

We would like to thank our sponsors: Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur, Stadt Göttingen, Landschaftsverband Südniedersachsen e.V. and Sparkasse Göttingen

WELTEN WANDLER N°3

Thomias Radin
Rhizome: Time of Revelation

Cover Image: RIVÂL – a collaborative film by Thomias Radin, Alex Brack, Mats Meisen, Kartago Film, 2023,  photo by Emmet Holmes-Boyes

The works of Thomias Radin are collages of cultural references in various forms of artistic expression in which he explores questions of identity and cognition. He describes his dance performances, paintings, installations, objects and social happenings as representations of “inner struggles” and attempts to reveal the tensions of a double consciousness: one that is shaped by the intellect and one that is at home in the physical experience of the black body. Colours, elements and memories of everyday life in his native Guadeloupe are fused with the urban culture of France, the lifestyle of the African-Caribbean diaspora and highly visible influences from the history of European painting in his multi-material works. In particular, the wood crafts from his family’s tradition form the material basis of his work groups.
These experimental collages of thematic references, everyday materials, full of familiar forms and images, which also incorporate music and dance, are reminiscent of the postmodern techniques of cutting, sampling and looping in hip-hop music. However, in the visual arts, Dadaism and Surrealism already celebrated the unconventional assembly of seemingly unrelated fragments as an inexhaustible method of opening up new and surprising accesses to a hidden reality.
Radin’s creative cosmos is even larger. It feeds not only on the reanimation of Surrealism, Gothic altarpieces or Baroque master paintings but also on motifs and symbols from Egyptian and ancient mythology, Christian iconography and even the spiritual formal language of the hybrid cultural fusion of the Caribbean finds its way into his pictorial canon. All these strands additionally nourish the subtle omnipresence of the fantastic, the incomprehensible and the subconscious in his work.
Thomias Radin is a trained dancer and choreographer who is constantly developing his personal style with elements of hip hop, contemporary dance, capoeira and Gwo Ka, the traditional music and dance form of his home archipelago of Guadeloupe. Gwo Ka plays a key role as the music of his ancestors: This culture was developed by the colonially enslaved population of his archipelago, her the improvised music reacts dialogic to the improvised dance and vice versa. This unique art form still generates strength, consolation and a sense of community today; it is a non-verbal act of remembrance and resistance. For him, this results in further important impulses for his artistic work: the physical memories from his dance sessions flow directly into his paintings, and the contentions in his painting influence his choreographies. According to his conception of art, there is no separation of disciplines in his work; all forms of expression are mutually dependent in his expressive work. Movement and the resulting transformation of shape and condition thus remain constants in his oeuvre. And the mysteriousness of their effect on our existence hovers over everything.

Thomias L. Radin was born in 1993 in Les Abymes, Guadeloupe, in the French Antilles and emigrated with his family to European France as a child. He is a French multidisciplinary artist with Afro-Caribbean roots, who received his Bachelor (2018) and Master of Fine Arts from the University of Rennes 2, and has already gained international recognition through his exhibitions and performances.
His bigger solo exhibitions until today are: Rhizome: Time of Revelation, Kunstverein Göttingen (2024), POLYCHROME – The Myth of Karukera & Cibuqueira, Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2023), The Myth of Inner Landscapes, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2019). His group exhibitions include: Society: Or Infinite Rehearsals, SAVVY Contemporary (2024), Poly: A Fluid Show, KINDL- Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin (2023 – 24), Embodied Spaces: The Body as Architecture, Strada Gallery, New York (2023), Les Enchantées, frontviews at HAUNT, Berlin (2023), The Garden, The Curators Room, Amsterdam (2023), Trangressive: Nonconformist Approaches to Art and the City, Kühlhaus Berlin, Berlin (2022), Non Playable character, The Fairest, 59th Venice biennale, Venice (2022), Home Alone, ATM Gallery, New York (2020), Berlin-Lagos Mobility and Heritage, Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2018).
His art is also essentially based on his collective practice with other artists and guests: he curates exhibitions, choreographs meetings and programmes of contemporary dance, he teaches his skills and gives workshops. Among other things, he is a guest lecturer at the Berlin University of the Arts. Thomias Radin currently lives and works in Berlin.

Text by Stephan Klee

Programme

Sat 17.08.24, 5 – 8 pm
Vernissage – Reception including Speeches and the Premiere of the film RIVÂL (Kartago Films) at 6 pm

Sat 14.09.24, 3 – 8 pm
The Long Art Afternoon with Thomias Radin, Jumoke Adeyanju, and Stephan Klee within the exhibition

Sun 22.09.24, 3 – 4 pm
Sunday guided tour with Justus M. Müller

Sun 06.10.24, 3 – 4 pm
Finissage with guided tour through the exhibition
and the new Edition by Thomias Radin

Please reserve your participation in the events at info@kunstvereingoettingen.de or klee@kunstvereingoettingen.de or by telephone on 0551-44899

THE EDITION OF THE SHOW

Thomias Radin
What a time to be alive, 2022/24
Edition 15 + 3 AP
H 42 cm x W 35.3 cm
Fine Art Long Duration Inkjet Print on
HAHNEMÜHLE Museum Etching, rough-matt natural white, acid-free, 100% cotton, 350 gsm

Courtesy of the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul
Price: 320 € / 240 € for members of KV Göttingen

The Kunstverein Göttingen considers itself very fortunate that Thomias Radin has produced an edition of one of his most impressive paintings for us. With this purchase you not only bring a wonderful work into your private space, but you also support the work of the Kunstverein Göttingen for contemporary young art and the artists involved.
> If you are interested, please contact us here: info@kunstvereingoettingen.de

The Annual Programme 2024
TERRA DIASPORA – CHANGING WORLDS

TERRA DIASPORA is the leitmotif of the Kunstverein Göttingen 2024–2025. In the face of fundamental upheavals in the coexistence of nature and mankind, TERRA DIASPORA stands for a world on the move; for a terrain that is becoming increasingly alien to its inhabitants, and for an earth on which people are becoming foreign bodies. It is an earth in a foreign territory, a terra diaspora.
The first part of the 2024 programme series is called TERRA DIASPORA – WELTEN WANDELN and shows artists, who create new worlds between rational reality, dream, and fantasy. Dubious of a purely functional picture of reality and often affected by family experiences of migration, the exhibited artists connect the accustomed with the new, combine facts with the fantastic and create their own identities out of old stories and new experiences. Worlds are made visible which stem from our roots and emerge when we wander the earth. The 2024-2025 annual programme, developed by curator Stephan Klee and the participating artists, will be overseen by him over the next two years.

In late summer 2024, we are particularly pleased to present the interdisciplinary artist Thomias Radin at the third solo exhibition of the year. His oeuvre moves fluidly between dance, painting, sculpture and film and brings attention to the cultural roots and world concepts of an Afro-Caribbean diaspora, in which a spiritual network of signs, movement and music permeates, transforms, and enriches the questionable principles of Western cultural hegemony.

We would like to thank our sponsors: Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur, Stadt Göttingen, Landschaftsverband Südniedersachsen e.V. and Sparkasse Göttingen