Po B. K. Lomami
Po B. K. Lomami (Pauline Batamu Kasiwa Lomami) is an indisciplinary and interventionist artist. They are a Congodescendant (DRC) from Belgium currently based in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal.
Exploring super-performance and failure, Lomami’s practice is anchored in performance art, informed by principles of Afrofuturism and crip time, and revolves around the displacement of work and the design of possible collective futures. They also work with poetry and photography, and create technological installations (video, sound, coding, sensors) based on their performances. They build a form of super-archive that doesn’t fix the moment of the performances in processed documents, but instead takes the shape of installations that explore super-performativity as an opportunity to feel someone and something that is not there anymore. Their work has been presented in Belgium, Sweden, New York and Canada, and their texts have been featured in French, Québécois and African books and journals.
Lomami holds a bachelor’s degree (2011) and a master’s degree (2014) in Business Engineering from the University of Namur, Belgium and a Graduate Diploma in Communication Studies from Concordia University (2022), Canada. They are currently pursuing the MFA program in Studio Arts – Intermedia at Concordia University for which they received the SSHRC and the FRQSC research scholarships, the Dave McGary Memorial Award in Fine Arts, the Concordia Fine Arts Scholarship, and the Desjardins Foundation Scholarship. However, their performance and intervention practices are separated from their academic education. They are a co-founder of Harambec – Reviving the Black Feminist Collective, DC – Art indisciplinaire (a crip artist-run center), and CHEFF – Fédération des jeunes LGBTQIA+.
aksanti 33 is a three-part series that refers to the end of long-standing family presences, personal events, and medical habits that had major importance in the artist’s life. aksanti 33 (part 2) is a 33-hour durational and participative performance that took place over 3 days at the FOFA Gallery in March 2023. It welcomed up to 30 visitors with who Lomami shared an intimate space for several hours and the non-addictive opioid-based medication that they took for the last time after 12 years of treatment until its production stopped. The project deals with pain, grief, and medicine through the activities of visitation, rest, and sharing of care. Participants were invited to feel and explore the work of time and medication on bodies, stories, and relationships. They simultaneously hold and archive the space together and practiced the act of welcoming and letting go again and again.
aksanti (part 2.02) is the second part of the archive of the performance. This interactive multimedia installation plays with the shrinkage of time and memories and how it changes our perception of social relationships by rendering the 33-hour experience into a 33-minute audiovisual immersion. As the viewers explore the room, they are immersed in audiovisual noise activated by the movement of people in the room and the archive. The noise functions as the signifier of content and void and as the announcer of arrival and departure. The behaviour of the noise guides the visitors to a state of rest. When their bodies finally rest, the noise dissipates to uncover a combination of soothing music, bits of recorded dialogues, and a visual abstraction and granulation of time and gesture.