Corner Dry Lungs
2024


Hundreds of meters of silver gelatin paper exposed, developed, and rinsed with a black hose, directly in the museum. 
Chemicals and water everywhere; on my skirt, on my skin, suede shoes soaked for days and nights –– it’s a mess; this work is about grief and it was a hard one to make.

Corner Dry Lungs is a site-specific process-based photographic installation exhibited at Zollamt MMK Frankfurt, curated by Lukas Flygare 

exhibition view photographed by Mathilde Agius

rinsed black photographs in garbage bags before being unfolded and stapled on black panels

gesture II – develop
process
27.09.2024

Paper. I exposed it, developed it, did not fix it, rinsed it roughly, and put it in a garbage bag to have it out of the way. It’s very heavy. I crumpled it, took the contaminated paper out of the bag and stapled it onto a support. It was flipped from laying down horizontally to the vertical  so the paper would cry till dryness. And I moved on to the next piece. Death logistics, funeral rituals, burying, reanimating, supporting structures, lacerate and Lazarett, patients, like many patients in a hospital, waiting, constellation, consolation, weight, wet, exhaustion of my body – my back hurts, really hurts, – and of the developer.

---

gesture III – index
process
04.11.2024

Each constellation is made of objects bringing their own weight. 
With the exception lungs 25 and five lungs laying on the ground in the show, 
I photographed each of the 56 lungs after numbering them. 
Using a medium-format camera and Portra 160 film, 
I documented each piece against a black background with a mirrored foil floor
 to reflect the unique topographies of the surfaces. These photographs form an index—both an archive and a continuation of the work. 
The process of photographing, developing, and hand-printing each piece in the color darkroom was a time-based action that I define as process—a medium I defined for my practice distinct from performance.
 It encompasses deliberate, purposeful acts to achieve a specific outcome, accessible and open to the public.
Each piece retains an individual number, marked from its inception, which will follow it through every future transformation. Whether the photographic objects are wetted, crumpled, re-dried, or re-mounted in new forms, their number remains a constant, preserving their identity. Over the coming years, I will continue to document these transformations, expanding the index as the pieces evolve, allowing their unique skins and lives to be traced.

Contenance (table 01)

photographic object, part of a photographic assemblage (used photographic chemicals, contaminated water, buckets, canisters, vitrines, garbage bags, rubber gloves, 
plastic sheets, tables)

photographed by Mathilde Agius
 

corner dry lungs
Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah, 02.02.2024

corner dry lungs, grey knees. 
breaking in front of the memory
the chest crying. 
moldy leaning death
ripped me juicy, fell alone.
fruit dripping like a fruit ripped
I remember the ground. 
I sit until I remember
went unbearable –

poem written and handprinted in the color darkroom for ROUGH TIDE