Housed in a pavilion in the courtyard of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, Josèfa Ntjam’s work takes the form of an otherworldly environment. The cosmic landscapes of a cyclical film morph on a large curved LED wall, enriched by a soundscape composed by Fatima Al Qadiri. Suspended jellyfish ‘sound showers’ play fragments of narration, while a membrane-like form emerges from the ground, diffusing electroacoustic frequencies and offering a resting space. These sonic sculptures are made from innovative materials such as biosourced resin and reishi mycelium.

The installation shapes a poetics of alterity, merging multiple perspectives and knowledge systems. The film fuses Dogon cosmogony and recent discoveries into a circular narrative of creation, featuring a cast of interspecies characters synthesised using artificial intelligence (AI) and digital tools. Sources for these creatures include 3D models of marine life, scans of West African statues held in museum collections and photographs witnessing decolonial independence movements. Through her act of blending, Ntjam embeds histories subject to hegemonic erasure within marine and cosmic landscapes to enable their resurgence. This approach draws influence from electronic duo Drexciya, whose mythology tells of an underwater population born from the wrecks of the Atlantic human trade, and musician Sun Ra, who envisioned Saturn as a host planet for Afro-diasporic people.

“swell of spæc(i)es is an alchemical process in perpetual agitation, the alloying of ancestral geneses with new image creation technologies.”
— JOSÈFA NTJAM