Otobong Nkanga | Cadence
Art Domantay | Project Consultant, Director of Fabrication & Installation
October 2024-June 2025
“Otobong Nkanga: Cadence presents a new commission by the artist: an all-encompassing environment of tapestry, sculpture, sound, and text that explores the turbulent rhythms of nature and society. Created specifically for MoMA’s Marron Family Atrium, the installation centers on a monumental, multi-paneled tapestry that suggests sprawling ecosystems and galaxies.”
https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5742
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/arts/design/otobong-nkanga-moma.html?searchResultPosition=2
https://www.instagram.com/p/DH9EGQxxwmH/?hl=en&img_index=1
A speaker embedded into a raku vessel, created in Spain. Both glass and raku vessels played sounds recorded by Nkanga. The sounds of her singing, gasping, wailing and laughing ask the question; What if a teardrop actually had a voice?
Thousands of feet of rope were hand-knit to be wrapped around airplane cable to hold up the glass and ceramics.
The rope was dyed in sections of orange, red, black, white, and grey.
Sticky Glass, the team who created the blown glass vessels.
Vessels were modeled after a 3D rendering of a water droplet falling through air.
Some vessels were sandblasted, while others remained shiny.
Picking out blocks of anthracite; large pieces of coal, with the biggest weighing over 2 tons
Channels were cut into the flat bottoms of the anthracite, in order for them to be picked up easily by a pallet jack
Hand-knit rope concealing airplane cables and speaker cables.
A patch for the crew.
Splitting the anthracite
Video from Powerhouse Arts