Eunhye Hwang / Otobong Nkanga

Well aware of the problematic role of the compass regarding colonial expansion and East-West, North-South antagonisms, the artists seek to open up new potential meanings by adding a sense of the personal: rather than emphasising the violent and territorial qualities of the instrument they point towards the search for belonging, the difficulty of finding one’s own path and the desire of creating one’s own place in the world. Puns, rhymes and other small gestures exchanged between each other and the audience are some of the means with which the artists build interpersonal relations marked by a tension between exclusion and inclusion, hospitality and rejection, synchronicity and dissonance.