Platform - Lydia Östberg Diakité x Awa Konaté
In the exhibition "Heaven Is Overrated" Lydia Östberg Diakité transforms Platform into a multisensory space with a starting point in the sky as a social-existential ecosystem in which sensations, theories and moods both break and create deep political narratives.
In the exhibition, Diakité works with heaven as a liminal space and reflects on the promise of heaven as a paradise. Christian promises of the kingdom of heaven are destabilised through speculative narratives, with references to Christian iconography. The artist reflects on heaven as a claustrophobic and ultimately psychotic place. A place where intertwinings of anxiety and conflicting feelings about the actual 'truth' of this place haunt one in life as well as in the afterlife.
It is this concept that defines the framework for Diakité’s exhibition. But "Heaven Is Overrated" is not a showcase for religious dogma. On the contrary, the aim of the exhibition is to step out of binary representational paradigms about faith. Paradigms that only visualise people when seen through logics that deal with rationality, obedience and duty, or something original and magical. However, the exhibition does not only speak to this sensation – to its violence and imaginary worlds – as the primary thing but rather to the stories, performances and poetic relationships that touch even liberating intimacies, death and reinvention.
"Heaven Is Overrated" is created by Lydia Östberg Diakité in collaboration with curator Awa Konaté.
The exhibition is supported by Statens Kunstfond og HAUT residency. Udstillingsrummet.
Platform er realiseret med support fra Det Obelske Familiefond. Se det samlede program for Platform 2023.
Download Press Kit (in Danish)
Opening Party torsdag 26 Oktober from 4-7 pm.
Where: Platform
Periode: 27 Oktober - 3 December 2023
About artist Lydia Östberg Diakité
Lydia Östberg Diakité is an artist who works across performance, video, text and choreography - often combined in installation and performative formats. With her practice, Diakité conveys complex speculative narratives on themes such as identity, power, heritage, popular cultural references and performative gestures.
Diakité graduated from The Danish National School of Performing Arts’ dance and choreography studies in 2017 and has since worked and toured with several works internationally: immortal summit (2021) and A Choreographic Conversation (2021) created together with BamBam Frost; CRY BABY (2020) and FIEBRE (2018), co-signed by Tamara Alegre and Marie Ursin and winner of The ImPulsTanz – Young Choreographers’ Award – [8:tension] series 2021.
Diakité is co-founder of Dance Cooperative (2019), an artist-run studio in Copenhagen, and serves on the board of The Union (2018), a cultural workers’ association that aims to create critical anti-racist discourse within the art and culture scene in Denmark.
About curator Awa Konaté
Awa Konaté is a curator and art consultant based in Copenhagen, Abu Dhabi and London. Her curatorial
practice is rooted in archival research, decolonial theory and the advancement of black feminist with an interest in both camera-based practices and multidisciplinary artists from the African continent and black diaspora.
As a curator, Konaté works with exhibitions, commissions and public programmes and in this connection has, among other things, worked with international institutions such as Serpentine Galleries, South London Gallery, The Showroom and Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Her texts have been published at Phaidon, in Third Text, Foam Magazine and in the catalogue in relation to the exhibition Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2023. Konaté holds a BA in political science from SOAS and a master’s degree in contemporary art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. In addition, she is the founder of the curatorial platform Culture Art Society (CAS), and daily she works as a curator at the Guggenheim Abu.