The final iteration of the exhibition by The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis which has been touring since May 2019, brings together a significant selection of works by The Otolith Group, the London-based artist collective founded in London in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun.
Featuring a cross-section of key works produced by The Otolith Group between 2011 and 2018, the exhibition reflects the artists’ ongoing commitment to creating what they think of as ‘a science fiction of the present’ through images, voices, sonic images, sounds, and performance.
The Otolith Group’s pioneering artworks which include post-cinematic essayist films, videos and multiple screen installations address contemporary social and planetary issues, the disruptions of neo/colonialism, the way in which humans have impacted the earth, and the influence of new technology on consciousness.
Xenogenesis is named after The Xenogenesis Trilogy, Octavia Butler’s title for her science fiction novels. Along with Octavia Butler, other key figures that form a compositional matrix for the travelling exhibition include the composer and musician Julius Eastman (1940–1990) and the polymath and educator Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).
Curated by Annie Fletcher, Director of IMMA, the exhibition originated at the Van Abbemuseum, the Netherlands in May 2019, and toured to Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne; Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkove, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Exhibition architecture is by Diogo Passarinho Studio.
The exhibition is accompanied by a major new publication, The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis, an extensive and comprehensive polyphonic exploration of the work of The Otolith Group. Edited by The Otolith Group with Megs Morley and designed by Luca Frei, Xenogenesis has been published by IMMA and Archive books, with the generous support of their international partners.
