Humility is not something we anticipate as a precondition for a successful art practice in contemporary art world. We are all expected to be loud and proud, hot IG feed, style overload, branding uber alles, merch potential exponential, especially if you are Gen Z. Age-wise, Again Chokuwamba is in the eye of this ego, personality, identity privilege maelstrom.

Moreover, his work is entirely about his life, sharing a diary of his experience and environment…hence the title.

And this is the edge at which ego and humility meet in a perfect balance. Ego to have the strength and ambition to claim a space for himself in our attention. The humility to know that he has only that what he is to speak about with absolute certainty, clarity and confidence.

In an artworld where artists are expected to set themselves impossible and insurmountable goals of saving the world, Chokuwamba does not play Jesus, he plays himself. And what comes out in his second solo, is a symphony of joy and uncertainty; a cinematic panorama of a young man launching himself into life perfectly confident that risk, failure and calamity are assured as much as happiness, heroism and success.

This is not a story of earnestness, self-righteousness and easy wins. It is a tale of total vulnerability with a canvas, it is a space have all been in, awkward, confused, in awe and in love.

There is no claim to grand ambition or lofty claims. There is nothing except a naked personal truth. It is a mirror that reminds us there is in fact nothing else.

Now we are up to date.

Valerie Kabov

Curator

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