“Multiple Entries-Africa and Beyond 2001-2008”

By Rosa Maria Falvo

“…And the waters rolled on,
and what was old was new, and what was new never came to stay,
but to skim the gates of change,
forever new, forever old and new:
Once-upon-a time,
Never the same, Always at last the same…”
[Kwesi Brew, Ghanaian poet]

As this poem evokes the activities of all living beings and of all phenomena, celebrating the continuity of life throughout the past, present and future, so too does Virginia Ryan’s work, inspired by a kind of “transcultural” reflection, recall the tide of change and transformation. It captures an old world and reinvents a new one suspended between reality and illusion, as it builds on a series of experimental possibilities and projections. This exhibition represents a response to the “local life-force” of the west coast of Africa, a place of slavery and gold, which has become a focal point for transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, linking the organic with the inorganic, and fusing borderlines of land and sea, history and culture. (more....)