AfricaIs aCountry

The Human Fantasy

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Human Fantasy

By
Sean Jacobs


Artist Simen Johan  photographs a variety of plants and animals in natural preserves, zoos, farms, museum dioramas or his own studio,then “resituates them digitally into new environments constructed from images photographed elsewhere.”  The new work, Until the Kingdom Comes, is on display from November 3 to December 23 at the Yossi Millo Gallery in Manhattan.

For Johan, the images, ” … depict an unsettling natural world hovering between reality, fantasy and nightmare. Johan merges traditional photographic and sculptural techniques with digital methods.”

While some photographs in the series reference Biblical motifs, Johan says that his choice of title, Until the Kingdom Comes, “refers less to religious or natural kingdoms and more to the human fantasy that one day, in some way, life will come to a blissful resolution. …In a reality where understanding is not finite and in all probability never will be, I depict ‘living’ as an emotion-fueled experience, engulfed in uncertainty, desire and illusion.”

Further Reading

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Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

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The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.