Scope BLN

presents

​

Numa: 

Susurros de una mandíbula rota // Geflüster von einem gebrochenen Kiefer // Whispers from a Broken Jaw

 

Solo exhibition by Johann C. Muñoz

 

July 14 – August 18, 2023

 

Opening: Friday, July 14 at 7 p.m.

Live performance at 8 p.m. 

 

Johann C. Muñoz (Bogotá, Colombia) is a transdisciplinary artist whose practice includes drawing, photography, sculpture, aural installations, intersectional ethnomusicology, and pedagogy as social practice.

 

At the opening of the solo show will be presented a performance by Johann C. Muñoz in collaboration with Tiffani Achilleas, Bárbara Lázara, Carolina Riaño Gómez, Danny Hayoun, and special musical guests La Cura Berlín.

 

Muñoz's exhibition is a mediation on neocolonialism and its tenants. Their work encourages the audience to reflect on the relationships and exchanges of values in our current sociopolitical climate, evoking a sense of "unforgetting" in the audience. NUMA is an exercise in historical memory that borrows storytelling structures from Vallenato and other Colombian musical genres to narrate migration stories and unearth colonial histories. NUMA also explores the history of mass graves and massacres committed by the Colombian army, the guerrillas, and paramilitary forces.

 

In Muñoz's performance, the quijada - an ancestral instrument connecting several musical traditions in Latin America - functions as a memento mori to contemplate the repetitive cycles of violence and trauma. While Muñoz's accompanying score, composed in collaboration with Danny Hayoun (USA/EGY/ISR), is a form of Afro/indigenous sonic mapping that explores the transformation of musical traditions born in Colombia, uplifting narratives of musicians living in exile.

Performances by Tiffani Achilleas (DEU/LKA), Bárbara Lázara (MEX), and Carolina Riaño Gómez (COL/DEU) contribute to the topography of decay and renewal, tracing moments of violence in Latin American and Caribbean history, and transmuting them into a celebration of life.

 

Text by: Natalia Ivanova Mount

 

 

Contributors:

Tiffani Achilleas - dance performance/choreography, Bárbara Lázara - voice, Janeth Tapasco - voice, Alvaro Muñoz - co-creator of video work, Carolina Riaño Gómez - vocals/percussion, Danny Hayoun - composition/production, KT – communications, Daniel Rivas – goldsmithing, Aranza Bastien – choreography,Paola Peña – choreography, La Cura Berlin - musical guest