Anohni: Miracle Now

ANOHNI opnåede først international anerkendelse med sit band Antony and the Johnsons, som opstod ud af after-hours performance-scenen i 1990ernes New York.

ANOHNIs videoinstallation er en udforskning af billede, lyd og tekst baseret på hendes stykke fra 1995 Miracle Now og fårsin premiere i Nikolaj Kunsthals Nedre Galleri. I Øvre Galleri fremvises et bredt udvalg af ANOHNIs værker, som viser hendes sans for materialernes taktile egenskaber: collager lavet af fundne objekter og hentet fra forskellige samlinger, fotografier, skulpturelle værker i den store skala og voksmalerier. Hendes animistiske drømmerier udtrykker følelser, en bevidsthed om medskyld og en længsel efter forandring stillet over for det menneskeskabte økologiske selvmord.

“Udvikler naturen sig, eller forandrer hun sig bare? Der kan nu lagres så store mængder informationer på så lidt plads. Videnskabsfolk har for nylig sagt, at traumer, som har ramt vores forfædre, ændrer vores genom på påviselige måder. Jeg forestiller mig, at man i fremtiden kan anbringe en vanddråbe i en maskine og få alt at vide om hvert et øjeblik, dens atomer har gennemlevet og alle de levende og ikke-levende organismer, den nogensinde har været en del af. Da mit stykke Miracle Now først blev opført i 1995, var min største drøm, at Naturen ville kunne fastholde en viden om alt, hun nogensinde havde været. Det rummede et fundament af håb for mig, ansigt til ansigt med det økologiske sammenbrud”. - ANOHNI

”ANOHNI udforsker parallelle bevidstheder, som hver for sig bidrager til den igangværende ødelæggelse af biosfæren. Med inspiration fra kunstnere som Kazuo Ohno, Peter Hujar og Jack Smith inviterer ANOHNIs værker os til at forstå flere lag af, hvad der virkelig foregår.” Helene Nyborg, udstillingskoordinator, Nikolaj Kunsthal.

MIRACLE NOW

After Rapture

After Darkfall

After embryo rain

Then will the time be born?

Then is it a moment?

In one moment, a flash of light

The history of the world

Then the dark before the birth of time again

- ANOHNI, 1995

Biography 

• Born in 1971 in West Sussex, Great Britain. ANOHNI and her family moved to California in 1981. 

• In 1992, she co-founded the late night collective Blacklips Performance Cult. The ensemble consisted of 13 core performers who presented anarchic, original plays.  

• In 1995, ANOHNI founded a new collective, The Johnsons, named in remembrance of Marsha P. Johnson, the transgender street activist. 

• In 1997,  she recorded her first full album and began performing as Antony and the Johnsons with a group of musicians at venues in NYC. 

• In 2004, ANOHNI staged a concert/performance piece TURNING in collaboration with Charles Atlas for the Whitney Biennale. 

• In 2005, Antony and the Johnsons’ album I Am A Bird Now won the UK Mercury Music Prize. Further albums followed: The Crying Light (2008), Swanlights (2010),  TURNING (2011), and Cut The World (2012). Cut the World included a 12 minute spoken piece entitled “Future Feminism”, in which ANOHNI began to define her animist, eco-feminist perspective more vividly. 

• In 2009, ANOHNI presented her first exhibitions of drawings and collage, at Isis Gallery in London and at Agnes B. Gallery in Paris. 

• In 2011, she scored and performed in Robert Wilson´s production The Life and Death of Marina Abramović. 

• In 2012, ANOHNI had a solo exhibition of drawings at the Hammer Museum in LA. 

• In 2012, MoMA presented Antony and the Johnsons´ symphonic concert/performance of Swanlights at the Radio City Music Hall. 

• In 2013, ANOHNI collaborated with filmmaker Lynette Wallworth and a group of senior Martu artists from the Western Australian desert. She went onto perform a concert and appear across Australian media in support of the Martu community in their fight to halt the development of a uranium mine on ancestral land.

• In 2014, ANOHNI collaborated with Kembra Pfahler, Bianca and Sierra Casady and Johanna Constantine to present 13 Tenets of Future Feminism at The Hole in NYC. 

• To coincide with the 2015 Paris Climate conference, ANOHNI released “4 Degrees”, a song addressing complacency in the face of global warming. 

• In 2016, her album HOPELESSNESS was released to critical acclaim, including another nomination for the Mercury Music Prize and a Brit Award.  Friedrich Meschede curated My Truth, ANOHNI’s first major art exhibition in Europe in Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany, presenting her work within the context of artists who have inspired her: Peter Hujar, Kazuo Ohno and James Elaine. 

• In 2017, ANOHNI was artist-in-residence in Aarhus, the European Capital of Culture. She restaged the FUTURE FEMINISM exhibition, lecture series and workshops in collaboration with Kembra Pfahler and Johanna Constantine.  ANOHNI presented a 5 channel video installation Silent Hopelessness and a concert with the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and Concert Clemens Choir.