September 26 – December 20
Resistance to rupture can be found and held in myriad ways, including sonic traditions that live in the body, evading erasure. In British Sierra Leonean artist Julianknxx’s black-and-white video, the suspended, dreamlike mise-en-scène is woven with lullabies collected by the musician and poet Mbaé Tahamida Mohamed (Soly) on his journey home to the Comoros Islands, located in the Indian Ocean off the eastern part of Africa, between Mozambique and Madagascar. Soly gifted these songs to his wife, Fatima Ahmed, who convened the Boras choir in Marseille in the hope of keeping Comorian oral traditions alive. Layered between the lullabies are poems derived from the artist’s own memories, myths, and observations, wherein salt conveys ritual and memory and brings us back to the ocean and ourselves.
Co-presented by the Toronto Biennial of Art and the Art Museum at the University of Toronto.
Bio
Bio
Julianknxx
Julianknxx is a poet, artist and filmmaker.
The polyphonic nature of Julianknxx’s work is indicative of his expansive practice, which is rooted in poetry but extends into performance, film, music and sculpture. Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Julianknxx draws on his personal experiences to broaden perspectives on the history and culture of Africa and its diasporas. Inspired by oral history traditions and working with a distinctive aesthetic approach, his films invite us to consider how we construct both local and global narratives, while reflecting on how it feels to exist in liminal spaces.
His work has been shown at galleries and museums worldwide, with his acclaimed first institutional solo show ‘Chorus In Rememory of Flight’ at the Barbican, London (2023), called ‘transcendent and poignant’ by the Evening Standard. Since then, the installation has travelled across Europe with presentations at Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM), Lisbon (2025), The Model, Ireland (2025), De Singel, Antwerp (2024). Further solo shows include a new installation ‘Shifting / Spirit / Time’ at BURO Stedelijk, Amsterdam (2025).
Recent group shows include; The Bienal de São Paulo (2025), A World in Common at Tate Modern, London (2023), C/O Berlin (2025), Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam (2024), the Sharjah Biennial 16, Sharjah (2025); Resonance: Black Visual Art & Sonic Chronicles at M.Bassy, Hamburg (2025); Keeping Time at Gallery 1957, Ghana (2024); Rites of Passage at Gagosian, London (2023); and To Be Held at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate (2023). Previous participations include Whitechapel Gallery Open, London (2022); Nocturnal Creatures at Whitechapel Gallery (2021); Lux at 180 The Strand, London (2021); The View from There at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2021); and more.
Performances include Listening in Quantum (2025), Attuned in the Bantutronic with Tina Campt at 180 Studios (2024); Chorus in Flight at The Philadelphia Museum of Art (2024), BURO Stedelijk (2024), and St James’s Church (2023); Art Basel Conversations: Sonic Performance, Basel (2023); and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2023).
Photo by Marc Hibbert. Courtesy of Julianknxx.
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Art Museum at the University of Toronto - Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
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Art Museum at the University of Toronto - Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
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