Spielraum

Spielraum is a single book sculpture installation, addressing the notion of “inner confinement” - what is it like to be confined to your own memory and cultural context? A study of the works of the first black German philosopher, Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703-1759). How free are our thoughts when the body is isolated from its surroundings? How long can a spirit and, according to Amo, a soul feast on the positive memories of a “free” life. Both sentences and the portrait, written on the paper, quotations from Amo's Apatheia text, appear abstract. They give impulses, stimulate thinking - they themselves become a scope, a Spielraum - to reflect on ́Otherness ,́ salient in all times. This book won the 2022 Artist Book Prize from the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany.

The book, as part of my ongoing Walk-in-book series, invites viewers to engage with the physicality of the book itself, transforming it from a passive object of observation to an immersive environment. Through this project, I aim to challenge traditional boundaries of book-making and storytelling, encouraging a deeper, embodied interaction with the spaces we inhabit, both physically and mentally.

2022, Open edition, Oilsticks, wood, bookbinder’s thread, Misu paper, ink.

Dimensions: 

24 x 24 x 1 inch or 60.96 x 60.96 x 2.54 cm (folded book)

14 x 14 feet or 426.72 x 426.72 cm (unfolded book)

2 x 2 x 6 feet or 60.96 x 60.96 x 182.88 cm (hanging sculpture)

Institutional collectors: Herzog August Bibliothek, University of Delaware