In the absence of evidence, we create stories

During a residency with the Sainsbury Centre, Rashaad Newsome has created a new holographic sculpture that gives voice to objects in the museum and the ancestors behind them. The figure morphs between a Fang reliquary guardian head from Gabon; Head of an Oba from Benin City; and Rashaad’s collages, all displayed nearby. It ponders the question of What Is Truth? alongside the histories and futures of the lives of objects within the museum. The dialogue was co-written by Rashaad and Being, an artificial intelligence entity created by Newsome and trained on writers such as bell hooks, Michel Foucault and Paulo Freire. Rashaad conceives Being as a non-racial and non-binary AI being that reflects the most admirable aspects of humanity.

Tania Moore, 2024