Purple, il colore ibrido della precarietà: colonialismo, iniquità sociale e antropocene nell’opera di John Akomfrah

One of Britain’s leading contemporary artists, John Akomfrah (Accra, Ghana, 1957) mixes a broad spectrum of images and sources into evocative video works according to his commitment to the idea of a “recycling aesthetic”. Weaving together historical and original footage, Purple (2017), his largest installation to date, concentrates on the human impact on the environment. The video’s nonlinear structure weaves together autobiographical memories and ecological and philosophical issues, resulting in an impressive collage of ideas, images and sounds that evokes the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world. Purple is the second in the trilogy of projects that focus on the vitality and volatility of the natural world: Vertigo Sea (2015) portrays the ocean as a site of both terror and beauty in which diverse narratives interact, touching upon migration, the history of slavery and colonisation, war and conflict and current ecological concerns; Four Nocturnes (2019) questions mortality, loss, fragmented identity, mythology, and memory using Africa’s declining elephant populations as its narrative spine. Analyzing this trilogy, the essay aims to reflect on the shift in focus in Akomfrah’s works: Instead of privileging humans in the narrative, the artist assigns an equal, or even greater, importance to other species and elemental components – the wind, the rain, the snow, the air we breathe – that became the actors in a post-Anthropocenic dialogue on our own cultural-geological present, where modern society has become, in the course of centuries of capitalist industry, a driver of social injustice and climate change.