The Warming Plateau
2018
16mm transferred to 2K film, Cordyline australis pink passion plants, daylight lamps, sound
Variable dimensions
Courtesy the artist and Andréhn-Schiptjenko
Santiago Mostyn (1981) is an artist and filmmaker based in Sweden but with strong ties to Zimbabwe and Trinidad. He creates films, installations and performances that exist in the divide between disparate cultural spheres, employing an intuitive process to engage with a knowledge and history grounded equally in the body and the rational mind. Mostyn studied at Yale University, the Städelschule in Frankfurt, and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and has exhibited widely at venues including Lunds Konsthall (2019), the Gothenburg Biennial (2017), Moderna Museet (2016) and Kunsthall Stavanger (2014). Most recently, he was the co-curator of the Moderna Exhibition 2018: With the Future Behind Us, Moderna Museet’s quadrennial survey of contemporary art in Sweden.
The Warming Plateau is a series of films and installations that consider the colonial bonds between Sweden, Latvia, and Tobago – a Caribbean island with uniquely preserved West African traditions. One segment of the central film, Drawing for Bellevue Estate, recalls the legend of Gang Gang Sarah, the ‘African slave witch’ who, wishing to return to her homeland, climbed a sacred Silk Cotton tree and tried to fly, not realizing she had lost her powers after having eaten salt. The other segment of the film shows four men cutting their way through the jungle, marking territory, calling out to each other in a choreographed land claim. The site of a seventeenth-century Couronian colony is recorded in a separate film and sound work, with a 360-degree panning shot considering this landscape as it stands today.
santiagomostyn.info