D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem

Residency report
Pastoral Brutalism… Subversive information Tension Access to beauty Self-portraiture Commemorate Trace Sensuality of materiality History of ecstatic painting, sculpture Devotional architecture merged with human Double standard Virgin whore untouchable Mother Holy Femme Sacred juice Annunciation Pilgrim prostration Concrete craving Performed body Head, butting, giving Horns, horned Pattern, ritual repetition Kaleidoscope, camouflage Illumination Visible/Invisble Tip drip lick Voice, body, mouth, tongue, thumb-toe, reliquary My neck, my back, my p****, my crack Elemental clay, waves, branch, tree, swing Elemental clay, waves, branch, tree, swing Gesture, stroke, beat, limpia, release, exorcise Ascend   Pastoral Brutalism presents new research in the studio and in conversation with my La Becque apartment lucky #19, charting the poetics of a sensual scholarly engagement with the performed body in relationship to modernist, neo-deco, and brutualist architectures and nature-based environments. I revisit past materials, utilizing site-specific multi-screen video installation in analog remix style highlighting city- and nature-scapes and intimate gestures; photo self-portraiture in garment and costume along Lac Leman; composite kaleidoscope wallpapers celebrating life and jouissance; and performances with ritual and fetish objects including tree branches, rosemary bundles, charcoal, sailing rope, meat hooks. All as a return to embracing the haptic, the role of shapeshifter, fantasy excavation, and the many forms of mémoire. — D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem  

Biography
D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem (b. Mkar, Nigeria) is a Califor-Nigerian and self-described “space sculptor”, designer, writer, performance artist, and educator whose multi-hyphenate practice and scholarship bridge notions of design, ritual, ecology, and Afrofuturity. Her work reflects an ongoing engagement with site, body, visibility, and identity. Duyst-Akpem creates interiors, garments, synesthetic sculptures, sonic interventions, fantastical interactive environments and liminal performances guided by hybrid archetypal beings to interrogate, titillate, decolonize, and empower, inspired by Sun Ra and asking: “Who controls the future?”.

Duyst-Akpem is an Associate Professor, Adj., at School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received awards for teaching excellence, diversity and inclusion. She is the founder of Denenge Design and In The Luscious Garden, both of which focus on holistic, conceptual approaches to human-centered design. Her work has been presented at ICA London, Red Bull Arts New York, MCA Chicago, Artexte Montréal, U.S. Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, among others. She is a contributor to Vegetal Entwinements (MIT Press), Theaster Gates: How To Build a House Museum (AGO Toronto), and essays on Afro-Futurism and design for the Venice Biennale via Kavi Gupta, Kunsthaus Zürich, and Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin. She was a 2014 NEH Fellow and 2016 Rebuild Foundation Place Lab Fellow, and launched the Camo Coat Collection and her first monograph AFRIFUTURI 02022020 on 2020.