Christelle Oyiri: Dead God Flow

On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, LAS Art Foundation presents a newly commissioned audio-visual installation, Christelle Oyiri Dead God Flow, and the live event series Foundations, by collective CEL, at CANK in Neukölln, Berlin. Dead God Flow is the first installation in Berlin by artist, DJ, and producer Christelle Oyiri. It is an audiovisual environment that brings together video, sound, and spatial design.

At its core is the video Hauntology of an OG, which Christelle Oyiri developed with photographer Neva Wireko during a research journey through Memphis, Tennessee – a city whose name refers to ancient Egypt. Narrated by rapper and poet Darius Phatmak Clayton, the piece braids together histories of conflict and monuments. It refers to the Memphis Pyramid on the banks of the Mississippi, standing like a mirror to Giza, Egypt, and echoing a lineage of grandeur and grief – as the artist describes. In Memphis, Tennessee, we also encounter the church where Martin Luther King made his final public speech and trace how, with his assasination, dreams of an alternative future were lost. In this landscape, the city’s rap emerges as an architecture of sound.

Screened alongside Hauntology of an OG is Hyperfate (2022), an earlier video by Oyiri which explores the mythologisation of deceased rappers and their canonization by fans as modern day saints. Placed in a site-specific audiovisual environment at CANK, these works are each imbued with personal narrative. Examining martyrdom and memory, excellence and prophecy, they remind us, in Oyiri’s words, that death is not an ending but a loop, a broken god’s beat still pulsing.

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