Must-See: Inside Tavares Strachan’s Luminous Archive

This review is part of a series of Must-See shows, in which a writer delivers a snapshot of a current exhibition

Tavares Strachan’s first major survey in continental Europe is a bold, poetic and immersive journey through forgotten histories and speculative futures. ‘Supernovas’ assembles a wide constellation of voices that find expression through a diverse range of media. Upon entering the first gallery – its walls painted black – one is greeted by a disembodied voice, synchronized with flickering neon text affixed to the walls. Glowing in yellow and blue, There is a Light in Darkness (2024) cites a passage from James Baldwin’s 1964 essay ‘Nothing Personal’. The work sets the tone for the rest of the show, in which figures who once flickered at the margins are made luminous and corporeal, and the historical contributions of Black visionaries to science and art are highlighted.

Nearby, There is Light Somewhere. Six Thousand Years (2018), functions as a black box. The cube installation grew from Strachan’s ambitious project Encyclopedia of Invisibility (2014⁠–⁠18), which spans over 3,000 pages of entries documenting forgotten or untold historical events, peoples or stories. In the middle of the space, the encyclopaedia lies open to entries on several film adaptations of H. G. Wells’s 1897 novel The Invisible Man. The cube’s inner walls are layered with further pages, overlaid with drawings, diagrams and photographs, forming a dense network of transhistorical and transcultural references. Strachan challenges Eurocentric systems of knowledge and power, inviting us to focus on what has been overlooked. 

The exhibition culminates with There Is Light Somewhere. Intergalactic Palace (2024), a hybrid architectural structure that fuses a 14th-century Ugandan coronation hut with a 20th-century geodesic dome. At its centre, a DJ booth is surrounded by a pantheon of busts depicting African-American and Caribbean musicians from Burning Spear to Nina Simone. A piano melody rises, followed by voices ranging from a rocket launch countdown to fragments from Gil Scott-Heron’s Whitey on the Moon (1970). Light bulbs illuminate the inner walls; a celestial dance of sound and light forms. The artist continuously subverts the theme of space travel – calling attention to the ways that it can be understood as a continuation of colonial expansion. In Strachan’s cosmos, the voice is a tool of resistance – listening becomes a political act.

Tavares Strachan’s ‘Supernovas’ is on view at Kunsthalle Mannheim until 24 August

_{Main image: Tavares Strachan,There Is Light Somewhere. Intergalactic Palace, 2024. Courtesy: the artist and the Hayward Gallery; photograph: Marc Blower}