Black Ancient Futures — SELECTED SHOWS

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Third World: The Bottom Dimension
SOLO | Serpentine Galleries | London, United Kingdom
Continuity Flaws: The LoopholeSOLO | Outernet Arts, Outernet London | London, United Kingdom

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WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age GROUP | Julia Stoschek Foundation | Düsseldorf, Germany

OMOIYARI: KEIKEN X GABRIEL MASSANDUO | The Photographers' Gallery | London, United Kingdom

Black Ancient Futures

2024 | GROUP SHOW

MAAT: Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology | Lisbon, Portugal

“Black Ancient Futures brings together a significant group of 11 artists from the vast African diaspora, some of them presented for the first time in Portugal, who employ different languages to propose a wide range of alternative narratives and landscapes that contest the dominant panorama of the contemporary arts.

Baloji, April Bey, Jeannette Ehlers, Lungiswa Gqunta, Evan Ifekoya, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Gabriel Massan, Jota Mombaça, Sandra Mujinga and Tabita Rezaire are the participating artists.

The works on display are the result of the combination of specific features of African culture with other cultures and other geographical spaces, and reveal the original energy of the itinerant fate of the African condition – of exile and settlement, demanded by the context of slavery, or of voluntary or forced migration as a result of the current global economic, political, and climate crises – offering a universe of creative possibilities. «These proposals neither illustrate a historically defined trend or movement nor advocate a specific ideological reading; rather, they call on diverse techniques, disciplines and languages, combining frenzied fantasies of form, colour, and sound, material experiences, thematic and temporal leaps, and direct references to non-Western spiritualities with the use or evocation of post-industrial technology to create magical or science-fictional narratives.”

Curatorship
Camila Maissune
João Pinharanda

Third World: The Bottom Dimension

Interactive Multichannel Videogame Installation, Single-Player PC Game, NFT Collection, foam, plush, textile, color, sound.

The commission expands an existing video game work, to show it in a new immersive environment. The artist worked to produce sculptures as game stations to play the video game. Together with architecture office CLUBE and a team of producers, the artist looked into the physical space as an extension to the digital field.

The work included two sculptures forming a gaming seat for the visitors on a stage. A system was built to transmit either one of live gameplay on a tv wall, turning the video game into a movie, which can be watched by the public present in the space. In such, moments of collectivity are shaped through a certain articulation of spatial elements.

‘THIRD WORLD: THE BOTTOM DIMENSION’
by Gabriel Massan

Lead Artist, Creative Director, 3D Sculptor, Concept
Gabriel Massan

Featured Artists
Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro
Novíssimo Edgar
LYZZA

Sound Design
LYZZA

Unreal Development
Alexandre Pina
Marchino Manga
Ralph McCoy

Capture Mode Development and Unreal Consultant
Iraj Montasham

Animation, Cinematography and Film VFX
Carlos Minozzi

Additional Cinematography
Alexandre PinaGraphic

UI Design
Masako Hirano

Writing and Narrative Design Support
Sweet Baby Inc

Translator
Adriana Francisco

Translation Support
Manuela Cochat

Mastering Engineer
Rainy Miller

QA Testing
Keiran Cooper

Curator
Tamar Clarke-Brown

Producer
Róisín McVeigh

Game Commissioned
in Association with Julia Stoschek

Additional Support
EDP Foundation
MAAT