For PARLA_MUTE his first solo exhibition at Michael Janssen Gallery in Berlin, Yonamine  (1975 in Luanda) presents a series of posters, silkscreens and large scale collages. The newly created works are made from a number of phrases and graphic material picked up, once more, literally from the streets and transformed incessantly through the remix and culminating in a total work of art that incorporates the entire interior and exterior Gallery space.

« The title of the show – PARLA_MUTE – is the name of a pathology: a parliament without a voice. PARLA_MUTE has always existed in my subconscious, perhaps because I have lived in a country whose regime is authoritarian and militarised, where you are not allowed to think or have your own opinions. PARLA_MUTE is a kind of cultural asphyxia in search of intellectual oxygen, filled with chaos and hope. » (YONAMINE, August 2022)

We should prepare ourselves, once more, for a poignant show filled with seemingly contradictory messages—“It’s expensive to be poor” resonates strongly, or think about the title if one reads it on a bilingual horizon—in which the incessant variations of a handful of themes take centerstage, as they unfold and unfold infinitely. In other words: prepare yourself to contemplate (and enjoy) the critical difference that separates iteration from repetiti- on because Yonamine will stage a show on such a gap. When you get to the show don’t mind the gap: he inhabits it, it is his favorite place, his most fertile locus; he knows it as any experienced surfer knows the waves of his favorite beach. It is there, amidst the incessant proliferation of posters, signs and messages that we will be able to realize that some of his incursions into the beaches of the contemporary sublime are so riveting admirable, so provocative tempting, that one just has no option but to follow him, surfboard in hand, wherever he goes.

michaeljanssen.gallery