Description
A considered and precise Limited Edition biography of the production of Asemota’s extraordinary performance ‘Ens Memoralis’ at the National Portrait Gallery in London on June 26, 2008. Centred on a photograph of Queen Victoria in the Gallery’s Collection, Asemota presented an extraordinary performance in The Ondaatje Wing Main Hall of the National Portrait Gallery that fused poetry by Rudyard Kipling, a praise song from the pre-colonial Kingdom of Benin and an edited sequence from Walter Benjamin’s treatise on art, authenticity and reproducibility in an event that offered a profound meditation on the portrait as a signifier of cultural identity, history and memory, authenticity and authorship. Leo Asemota is a London based artist with a continuing history of exhibitions internationally.
‘Ens Memoralis: Testimony’ is presented in accordion pleated pages _ unfolds to a length of 15.5 feet _ in a hard back cover housed in a black clothbound hardcover slipcase. Each edition features Asemota’s handwriting in pigment ink, drawings in lead pencil includes the seven Marshallings in the performance, drawings in orhue (kaolin) and coal*, a post-it note, a leaf out of a novel, photocopies, post-card, a piece of ribbon, a unique Polaroid SX-70 Blend colour photograph, newsprint, production handout on letter headed paper and archival colour photographs; affixed to the spine of the slipcase is the Stabilo eraser tipped HB Blacklead pencil with which the drawings were made.
*Pages contain orhue (kaolin) and coal sand particles
EOTLA, 2008, clothbound hard back cover of 35 concertina pleated pages, mixed media, 14.8cm x 21cm.
Limited Edition signed artwork of 10 copies.
