Germination, 2017

Otobong Nkanga comes together with soap maker Evi Lachana to expand upon the idea of soap—a ubiquitous product essential to our health and central to Nkanga’s work Carved to Flow, 2017. As part of documenta 14, the artist started a performative soapmaking laboratory in Athens, later selling the soap in Kassel.

In the performance Germination, Nkanga evokes the previous phases of Carved to Flow and meditates on the networked geographies, traditions, histories, and people engaged in the production of soap, proposing it as a model of social, economic, and conceptual circulation.

Part of Propositions #1: What We Mean.