MEDICATION TO DIE is an installation composed by 40 crystal and glass jars filled with lethal capsules made from yew tree leaves (Taxus baccata) harvested from the 20 cemeteries of Paris. The jars are sealed with candle wax and white wool thread smeared with chicken blood and holy water. The jars are sorted according to which cemetery the yew in the capsules they contain comes from (e.g.: all the yew-based capsules harvested in the Père Lachaise cemetry are in a separate group from the others).

MEDICATION TO DIE is an installation composed by 40 crystal and glass jars filled with lethal capsules made from yew tree leaves (Taxus baccata) harvested from the 20 cemeteries of Paris. The jars are sealed with candle wax and a white wool thread smeared with chicken blood and holy water. The jars are sorted according to which cemetery the yew in the capsules they contain comes from (e.g.: all the yew-based capsules harvested in the Père Lachaise cemetery are in a separate group from the others). The jars are covered with sacrificial materials (like Orisha shrines, Boliw fetishes and church candlesticks). The yew was a sacred tree in pre-Christian Europe bearing a strong symbolism both as a tree of death and life. By syncretism, it is found today in cemeteries and churchyards. It is a poisonous tree (50 needles are enough to kill an adult human being). The jars were covered, through a performative sacrifice, with the blood of two chickens: transforming these jars into receptacles invested with lethal potential and a sacred character, echoing at the same time the symbolism of the tree.

Name: Kevin-Ademola Sangosanya
Born — Location: France - France

French and Nigerian artist, Kevin-Ademola Sangosanya lives and works between Paris, France, and Ibadan, Nigeria. He has lived and worked in South-Africa as well as Equador. He is part of a Paris-Aubervilliers artist-run space, the Carbone 17 who hosts residents from around the world and works with the local communities.

I question my identity on a personal and societal level. I am interested in the experience of embodied life through ideas such as transcendence and the concept of àṣẹ (a force of agency, central in Yorúbà philosophy and culture). This introspective and intimate approach is reflected in a visual identity in which the superimposition of image and text, as well as themes of the occult and the sacred, play an important role. I see my works as portals: either to the invisible world when I work with sacred and highly symbolic materials such as cowries, hair, Bible pages, sacred bark and wood, blood... or to my deepest self. My approach seeks to highlight the power of resilience that elements from dominated cultures possess, arguing that they are invested with àṣẹ while infusing my own work with this same àṣẹ. Theories on the Black Atlantic stipulate that there is a cultural continuum around the Atlantic between black cultures and that the elements that make it up have been able to endure despite the middle passage and the desire to erase them by the dominant culture by “blending” with it in appearance. Here, I equate this power of resilience with the concept of àṣẹ from the Yorúbà culture. The àṣẹ, which can be translated by the phrase “so be it”, is a force of agency that infuses all things, it is at once the breath of life and the ability to act on one's environment. Some elements, like blood, milk, sperm... are more charged with àṣẹ than others, and the appellation àlaṣẹ designates a person or object particularly charged with àṣẹ.