EX­hi­Bi­tion

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

“How Much Light Must I Consume?” is the first exhibition in Japan by acclaimed poet, artist, and filmmaker Julianknxx. A richly sensory meditation on memory, place, and belonging, the exhibition weaves together music, moving image, and poetic reflection, proposing sound as a medium through which cultural knowledge is shared across generations and geographies.

Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Julianknxx moved to London aged nine. His work explores themes of identity, belonging, and the emotional and spiritual impact of migration. Marked by their emotional depth and intellectual rigor, his visually striking films and performances offer poignant reflections on the intersections of race, history, and contemporary society.

Combining film, sculpture, and sound, “How Much Light Must I Consume?” approaches memory as a collective and continually evolving process expressed through acts of gathering, ritual, and care. At the center of the exhibition is the film What Colours Can We Dream in This Night Filled with Salt? (2025). Drawing on lullabies from the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean, the work is shaped through songs collected and performed by the Marseille-based Boras Choir, whose practice is rooted in sustaining Comorian oral tradition. From this point of departure, the film moves between myth, memory, and lived experience, layering poetry with newly composed choral works.

Sound becomes a vehicle of transmission; the voice, a living archive. Legacies of migration and subjugation, of myth and mourning, take on new shape, transformed through rhythm, repetition, and song into a new language of kinship and connection.

—Ekow Eshun