Pervasive Light 

2021
Three-channel video; 55” LCD screens; Performer: Mariama Ndure; Camera: Andre Katombe (Sonrise Picture); Music: Sandra Mujinga; (16 mins)   

In Pervasive Light the protagonist moves elusively blending in and out of the background and avoiding being caught by a glance. The work considers how light can have a different meaning for deep-sea creatures who live in an environment where sunlight cannot penetrate. Instead, these creatures of the deep create light themselves through bioluminescence. This has parallels with how light, understood as visibility imposed from outside, can itself be unwelcome given the violence that can follow from visibility and representation.    

 Supported by: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen   

 Courtesy of: Croy Nielsen  

 Pervasive Light is a part of the permanent collection at MoMA, New York

Sandra Mujinga thinks through speculative fiction in Afrofuturist tradition, creating works that depart from a purely anthropocentric approach to understanding the transient world we are living in now. Her works negotiate questions of self-representation and -preservation, appearance, and opacity, through an interdisciplinary practice which often reverses traditional identity politics of presence.   

Mujinga has recently exhibited at: Moderna Museet Malmö; Sandefjord Kunstforening, Nottingham Contemporary; Malmö Konsthall; Munch Muesum Oslo; New Museum Triennial; Trondheim Museum; Hamburger Bahnhof; and the 59th Venice Biennale 

Röda Sten Konsthall