Skin Hunger — SEAGER

Skin Hunger is the culmination of Atari Kuggah’s material experiments on challenging representation and the stereotypes which remain deeply entrenched in a psyche: a multifarious portrait of being turned inside out. A fugitive imagination taps into lived experience, trauma and beyond through the sculptural and linear rendition of a reality which is critical towards itself. Bodies appear and disappear in latex surfaces, blurred in digital prints obscuring their lascivious behaviour. Atari reveals not only the problematic nature of erotic material but offers a vision for understanding race and sexuality often restricted by stigma. He believes there is space to fabricate ways of grappling with stereotypes in the realm of sex and pleasure when it comes to art, film and more broadly culture. This first solo-show inescapably tells of an origin myth, how western reality came into existence; which racist models were projected onto bodies; how Atari’s reality shifts in growing awareness towards desire. The etched surfaces of his drawings on latex sculptures pour out from the picture plane and find their reflection in videos rippling in front of our eyes. Skin Hunger considers Susanna Paasonen’s reference to Foucault’s discussion of sexuality in “Many Splendored Things” as a central concern- as “our own creation, and much more than the discovery of a secret side of our desire”, namely “a possibility for creative life”. Atari plays with the hesitance of the defamed “gaze” by coupling images that both provoke and hinder a comprehensive affective response. A mural is temporarily placed at a point of passage within the gallery, extending the sense of ephemerality found in the allusion to skin with latex reliefs. The video works constitute the opposing sides of the same coin. One is violent in its clarity, while the other is violent in its erasure and uncanny trembles. The title of the exhibition refers to the biological need for human touch, a crucial consideration in post-natal care routines. One also intuitively breaks up the phrase, thinking of skin in terms of longing and hunger as a cannibalistic drive.

Atari Kuggah’s (b.2000) work is primarily autobiographical in nature albeit his practice stems from a rich historical understanding of his complex identity as a Nigerian man today. Latex assemblages, digital prints, collages and videos all operate under the framework of wrestling as a metaphor for struggling with his complex post-colonial identity, his strained relationship with family and friends. Using hyperbole, irony and stylistic references to comics in his visual language, Atari seeks to retain and expand upon the vulnerability in physical contact and other encounters. His methods are attentive to the stereotypes often associated with black men and he delves deeper into issues around hypermasculinity and violence as his subject matter.
Atari was the winner of the 2021 Hamad Butt Award, awarded by Goldsmiths University and the Butt family. He is currently studying in BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths. SKIN HUNGER is his first solo-show.