Grada Kilomba’s Illusions Vol.II: Oedipus will be on view as part of the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions until 23 February at the Tokyo Photographic Museum. The festival’s theme ‘’What is time?’’ forms part of the official preparation for Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Playing with the illusion of a two-layered scenario, Grada Kilomba created a silent film in which the characters move inside a white space while the artist, outside, gives voice to the images and becomes a contemporary 'Griot', complete with post-colonial urgency. "Sometimes, I feel that I live a space of timelessness," the artist narrates, "in a space where past and present seem to coincide."
llusions Vol. II, Oedipus (2018), which was commissioned by the 10th Berlin Biennale and is the second part of her Illusions series, which revisits Greek mythology using the African oral tradition of storytelling. In Illusions Vol. II, Oedipus, Thulile Gamedze writes, Kilomba "extends the trajectory of her Illusions series – which began in 2016 with the story of Narcissus and Echo – by presenting an iteration dedicated to the myth of Oedipus, which explores the fatal tensions between a father and son doomed to tragedy. Using film and music combined with oral storytelling traditions, Kilomba uses the topics of loyalty and the politics of violence to consider the role that destiny can play for those embedded within a system of reproductive and cyclical oppression."
