Silas Mensah, The Noisy Wall, detail, Eva Maria Ocherbauer 2017.
Silas Mensah, The Noisy Wall, installation view, Eva Maria Ocherbauer 2017.
Born Kumasi, Ghana (1988)
THE NOISY WALL 2017
textiles, paint
Courtesy of the artist
Artist’s statement
Upon observation, the portraiture of 1960s compound houses in the metropolis of Kumasi (Ashanti region-Ghana) seem, interestingly, to mimic the urbanized settlement. This has triggered my interest and contributed to shape the ideas of my artistic practice. Such local community spaces are populated with a socio-cultural system that seems to blend with a rhyme of patterns and forms of the old compound houses. I see the painted wall surfaces have faded out and unraveled. They are patched up with layers of dirt to give a unique, interesting effect: It looks like that of the history of abstraction; the 1960s paintings.
Posters are peeling off from the wall; patches of rusted roofing sheets are attached to the broken parts of the wooden windows: often wrapped from its edges with a blue or black polythene sheet; discarded car tyres soaked with rains are spontaneously assembled on the roof tops. The patterns and layers of the rusting roofing sheets leak rains on the wall to make interesting stains.
Re-imagining my space, an elusive voice, with a tumultuous wave in the aura of that local community space, inspires me to formulate poetic phrases in relation to my work: Just like this-[Old buildings smile and reflect brown rays of laughter. The sun rises in the morning, strikes the roof tops with orange light rays. Peeping through the stain walls, the sun receives heat from the burning space…then flattens it with fine red clay! Re-imagine all is night …the stars and its rays are black and blackish….arrays of unified color at the center of the shadow. What is the color of it? Monochrome? The walls speak so loud and conjure an overwhelming noise within the perimeter of its edges].
I am inspired to paint with manganese dioxide extracted from discarded alkaline batteries and a variety of clays dug from across specified places in Ghana (the Ashanti and Eastern Region). I also experiment with other relative materials, which I apply loosely with household paint brushes on assorted fabrics, some with already industrial print (rayon, cotton, polyester, bed linen, etc.). I use gum-arabic or cassava starch as binder to make the paintings look subtle and translucent, in effect, like watercolor wash.
I exploit the flexible nature of my stained fabric paintings to drape, hang or form around objects that hang in free space. Thus, I imitate the layout designs of contemporary urban dwellings.
