Na Chainkua Reindorf : An emphatic assertion: Or self trough the mask.

 

Na Chainkua Reindorf takes the centuries-long history of masking—which is related to dancing,  storytelling, and weaving of materials into costumes—and uses its ideologies and methods to explore what she refers to as “(re)claiming agency in self-expression.

Born in Ghana, and living and working in the US,Reindorf has cultivated a practice that melds past and present, here and there, complicating notions of objective and singular representation. For the exhibition, Memoria: accounts of another History, Reindorf presents Bomi: Second Life, a mixed media sculptural work that explores the entanglement
between history and memory through materiality and mythmaking.

 

“Reindorf operates within this tradition of narrativizing—passing along histories through masking.”   

In Bomi: Second Life, white masks made of glass beads and fabric orbit a human-sized figure that is cushioned with soft materials around its midriff. Where feet would be, strips of fabric dangle, a delicate maneuver engaging depth, texture, and arrangement. Much like the masked faces surrounding it, the figure hovers in a ghostly state, fragile and light.

For many living on the African continent, the mask is often reflected on as a signifier of culture and tradition. The practice of masking and masquerading in particular finds its origins in West Africa, where it is often employed as an instrument of collective remembering and affirmative narration. The practice communicates the notion of “making man,” known as Ime Mmadu in the Nigerian language of Igbo, a state through which the masking process gives physical form to a spirit being

In his 2002 text, ‘Ben Enwonwu: Aesthetics and Artistic Identity in Modern Nigerian Art’, artist and scholar Sylvester Ogbechie writes about Ime Mmadu as “a practice that emphasizes art as performance and ritual.” Through this reading, the mask is always imbued with the spirit of its wearer and, equally, the wearer is imbued with the mask’s spirit. A sense of embodiment is produced and presence is evoked
through materials, rituals, and observances.

In the same article, Ogbechie meditates on the embodiment of form in masking practices, noting; “The artist (Omenka) is identified as a maker/creator of spectacles (Ihe Nkiri), not in a pejorative sense as a purveyor of illusions, but in the concrete sense of his mastery of narratives and metanarratives.” Reindorf operates within this tradition of narrativizing—passing along histories through masking.

At the heart of her work is the practice of mythological world-building where she takes fragments and shards and makes them into something whole. For instance, in Bomi: Second Life, Reindorf draws from Mascarons, the carved, ornamental faces dotted around majestic buildings in European cities, popularized through the Beaux Arts and Art Nouveau movements.The French city of Bordeaux—where the exhibition began and where the artist produced the work—has a complex history with slavery. The city was, for over a century, France’s second-largest slave trading port city. Oftentimes, the Mascaron thought of as “large grotesque faces” was made to reflect the faces of enslaved people. Reindorf confronts this history and reclaims the representation of slavery through the intimate act of casting her own face as
a Mascaron.

Check the artist’s Instagram : @ncreindorf

Written by Nkgopoleng Moloi

This text is an extract from the catalog “Memoria Yaoundé”, published to coincide with the exhibition Memoria: récits d’une autre Histoire, presented at the Musée national du Cameroun from 10 February to 31 July 2023, as part of the tour of the exhibition of the same name presented in 2021 at the Frac Nouvelle Aquitaine MÉCA, Bordeaux, and in 2022 at the Musée des cultures contemporaines Adama Toungara, Abidjan.

The catalogue can be downloaded free here: Memoria Yaoundé 

 

1 From An Introduction by Zach Blas. Camera Obscura 92, Volume 31,
Number 2. doi 10.1215/02705346-3592499 © 2016 by Camera Obscura.
Published by Duke University Press.