ACE AIR: EMMANUEL IDUMA
Program: Ace AIR Location: Ace Hotel New York Date of Stay: 11-05-17 Artist: Emmanuel Iduma
During a recent stay at Ace Hotel New York, writer and artist Emmanuel Iduma took marker to wax paper and put down a few of his thoughts with photographic interjections:
We now know, however inaccurate our claims, how long it takes for light & sound to travel...
What we are yet to know is how long it takes for letters of an alphabet to form an impression, moving from the reading eye to the sensuous heart
Sometimes, I shudder to think of how far each letter engraved by my hand, copied later on a postcard, typed up for Instagram, travels. This photograph:
from the Fireflies series by William Larson, teaches me a thing or two about -- letters scrambled on a page, words scratched-out or misspelt, only so they would reach an anonymous addressee.
Emmanuel Iduma is the author of The Sound of Things to Come (first published as Faradin Nigeria), and A Stranger’s Pose, a forthcoming travelogue (Cassava Republic Press, 2018). He co-edited Gambit: Newer African Writing. His essays on art and photography have been published widely, including in ArtNews, Guernica, Aperture,and Brooklyn Rail. He is editor of Saraba Magazine, and a faculty member of the MFA Art Writing program at the School of Visual Arts, New York. He was associate curator of the Nigeria Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale.
This November, Ace AIR is curated by Rashaad Newsome Studio, a full service production company specializing in the convergence of film, art, media, design, live performance, music, fashion, and technology. Led by multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome, the studio works with the industry’s most visionary talent and brands to exhibit transmedia stories and experiences. Best known for his visually stunning collages housed in custom frames, Newsome’s work is deeply invested in how images used in media and popular culture communicate distorted notions of power. He crafts sample-based compositions that surprise in their associative potential and walk the tightrope between intersectionality, social practice and abstraction.