AKOSUA VIKTORIA ADU-SANYAH – RESIDUAL SKY UNDER CONTAMINATION

Today 11:00 – 18:00 h

Large-format, hand-developed color prints are characteristic of the artistic work of Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah (b. 1990). Through manual and chemical processes, the German-Ghanaian artist shifts and expands the boundaries of photography. By transferring the fleeting states of analogue development – otherwise only experienced in the darkroom – into the exhibition space, she makes the unseen, latent, and processual nature of the medium perceptible.

The starting point for her current works are historical photographs from the British Empire & Commonwealth Collection in Bristol, taken at her father's birthplace in present-day Ghana. In search of alternative narratives, she detaches skies, treetops, and landscapes from their colonial context and transfers these extracted fragments of nature onto color negatives. A recurring image in her work is a portrait of her great-grandfather Wilhelm Schlüter in the German Air Force. “For me, this photograph functions less as a historical document than as a kind of ghost. (...) The image represents a structural disturbance in my own existence,” says the artist.

For her, the darkroom serves not only as a site of production, but as a space of reflection in which experiences, relationships, and memories take shape before they become fully visible. RESIDUAL SKY UNDER CONTAMINATION features approximately 20 new large-scale works installed in a tilted position “against” the exhibition space.

Curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, curator at the House of Photography. Curatorial assistance: Viktoria Rochambeau, curatorial trainee, House of Photography.

Accompanying the exhibition as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography, an accordion-fold booklet will be published featuring a new work and an interview with Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah.

Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah Sanyah (b. 1990) is a German-Ghanaian artist based in Zurich. She works with photographic objects, installations, painting, and process-oriented image development. Recent solo exhibitions include “no flowers” at the Centre culturel suisse, Paris; “Residual Sky” at Kunsthaus Glarus; “Corner Dry Lungs” at the MMK – Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main; and “The House Is a Body” at the Bristol Photo Festival, as well as presentations at Art Basel Hong Kong and Foam Museum Amsterdam. She is a recipient of the Swiss Art Award. Her works are held in numerous public collections, including the Kunsthaus Zürich, the MMK, and the Stedelijk Museum.

In collaboration with the HFBK Hamburg – University of Fine Arts, we are establishing an open black-and-white photo lab with a darkroom as part of the exhibition. The accompanying workshop program creates space for encounters, convergences, and contradictions, responding to a desire for community and materiality. The focus is on the emotional, decelerated, and reconciling qualities of analogue photography: as it emerges and fades, it opens up alternative temporalities and resistant futures.