Sierra Leonean Poet & Multidisciplinary Artist Julianknxx will present his short film In A Dream We Are At Once Beautiful alongside a special performance at Art Basel’s Conversations Programme.
Alongside a local choir and French-Senegalese singer anaiis, the work centres on African diasporic communities in Switzerland through a series of lush vignettes shot in natural and urban settings in Basel, Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. Through sound, poetry, and song, the performance examines the lines between imagined realities and lived experiences, and our ability to dream on our own terms, asking, ‘whose dreams are we attempting to live?’
Julianknxx’s work merges his poetic practice with film and performance; engaging in a form of existential inquiry that at once seeks to find ways of expressing the ineffable realities of human experiences while examining the structures through which we live.
In casting his own practice as a ‘living archive’ or a ‘history from below’, Julianknxx draws on West African traditions of oral history to reframe how we construct both local and global perspectives. He does this through a body of work that challenges fixed ideas of identity and unravels linear Western historical and socio-political narratives, attempting to reconcile how it feels to exist primarily in liminal spaces.
Growing up between continents, French-Senegalese artist anaiis, moved from Toulouse to Dublin and Dakar before settling in Oakland, California. She studied at Tisch School of Arts in New York before relocating to London to pursue her music career. anaiis’s storytelling showcases a complex and personal journey, her work is self-reflective and created in pursuit of a collective healing. She’s collaborated with artists such as Julianknxx, Chronixx, Julien Creuzet, and commissioned work for renowned institutions such as White Cube Gallery, V&A museum and more.
Her debut album, this is no longer a dream (2021) explores themes of isolation and disillusionment and forms an inner conversation that flourishes from angst and neurosis to self-affirmation and hope.
The Art Basel 2023 Conversations programme is curated by Emily Butler with coordination and support by Arianna Guidi.
Conversations take place in the Auditorium, Hall 1 ground floor. They are free and open to the public, booking is recommended see above. Doors will open 10 min before the event.
Art Basel Conversations | Sonic Performance: Julianknxx, Whose Dream is This?
Thursday 15th June, 7-8PM Art Basel, 10 Messeplatz, Basel, Switzerland
RSVP via Art Basel HERE (FREE)
ABOUT JULIANKNXX
Julianknxx’s work merges his poetic practice with films and performance; he engages in a form of existential inquiry that at once seeks to find ways of expressing the ineffable realities of human experiences while examining the structures through which we live.
In casting his own practice as a ‘living archive’ or a ‘history from below’, Julianknxx draws on West African traditions of oral history to reframe how we construct both local and global perspectives. He does this through a body of work that challenges fixed ideas of identity and unravels linear Western historical and socio-political narratives, attempting to reconcile how it feels to exist primarily in liminal spaces.
Julianknxx is currently showing in the exhibition Air at Utah Museum of Fine Arts, USA. Other recent exhibitions include In A Dream We Are At Once Beautiful, Foley Gallery, USA (2022); The London Open at Whitechapel Gallery, UK (2022); The View From There, Sadie Coles HQ, UK (2021); Lux: New Wave Of Contemporary Art, 180 The Strand, UK (2021); Contra La Raza [Against Race], Matadero, Spain (2021).
Performances include Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands (2021); Fact Magazine (Online Residency) (2021); OT301 Amsterdam, Netherlands (2020); ICA London, UK (2019); Southbank Centre, UK (2019).
Born in 1987 in Sierra Leone, Julianknxx now lives and works in London, UK.
