P04 Blackout

With works by:

Dulcie Abrahams Altass

Marie Hélène Pereira

Christian Danielewitz

Dana Liljegren

Dr Iba Fall

This exhibition was part of Danish artist Christian Danielewitz’s researchs on the socio-ecological wreckage caused by global industries of resource extraction. During a prior residency with RAW Material Company in June 2018, Danielewitz focused his research on the mining of phosphate. This mineral, forged by nuclear reactions in supernova explosions is, in different forms, essential to all life on earth. Mined extensively in Senegal, current rates of extraction suggest that worldwide phosphate resources will be depleted in maximum one century. 

Beyond concerns for the resource’s future, we must also cast our attention to the toxic spoils of its production cycle. The sulphuric acid used to dissolve phosphate rock is increasingly present in the atmosphere of villages in mining zones, leading to chronic health problems amongst local populations, spoilt harvests and rapid material degradation of the built environment. The same mineral that is mined for fertilizer, a life giver, is responsible for the weakening of chains of nutrition on a local level. Danielewitz exposes this irony and its impact in an installation that bears witness to the devastation experienced in the village of Gad Gomene, situated near the open pit phosphate mines of Taiba, Senegal. The installation’s zinc roof, structurally unsound and in a state of advanced oxidization, was previously part of Gad Gomene’s mosque. It shelters a bed of soil holding acacia seeds, the same crops that are now failing in Taiba, here embedded in fertilizer from the same region and given light for life by way of neons powered by lithium batteries, themselves developed using phosphates. Over the course of the exhibition, as the phosphate levels in the batteries run down, the neons – reading “Toute vie - chaque cellule vivante” (All life – every living cell) – will eventually flicker and fade, jeopardizing the sustainable growth of the ecosystem built within the gallery, and shrouding the installation in darkness. 

P04 (Blackout) also includes a series of film screenings, panel discussions and workshops that expanded on environmental issues in Senegal and the artistic and civic solutions that are instigating change.