RESIDUAL SKY UNDER CONTAMINATION
2026
exhibition configuration with unique photographic paintings
2026
exhibition configuration with unique photographic paintings
AKOSUA VIKTORIA ADU-SANYAH – RESIDUAL SKY UNDER CONTAMINATION
June 5, 2026 – November 1, 2026
Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah’s works are large-scale chromogenic prints developed
entirely by hand. Rising up to 279 cm in height, the photographs stand within the
space like exposed bodies. Their surfaces carry traces of pressure, exhaustion,
contamination, and repair.
Produced in a self-built darkroom permanently installed in the artist’s Zurich studio,
the works emerge through physically demanding and unstable processes. Light
enters through small openings; chemicals are pushed beyond exhaustion; scratches,
folds, residues, and gestures of handling become embedded within the skin of the
image itself.
The sequence RESIDUAL SKY UNDER CONTAMINATION follows the temporal logic
of its own making. The works do not conceal the conditions of their production but
remain marked by them. Photography appears here not as a fixed image, but as a
vulnerable material state unfolding in space and time.
Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah (b. 1990) is a German-Ghanaian artist living in Zurich.
She works across photographic objects, installation, painting, and process-oriented
image development.
This year, her works were featured in solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Glarus and the
Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris. Other solo exhibitions include »Corner Dry Lungs« at
the MMK – Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2024–25) and »The
House Is a Body« at the Bristol Photo Festival (2024), as well as presentations at Art
Basel Hong Kong (2025) and at the Foam Museum Amsterdam (NL). She is a
recipient of the Swiss Art Award and has received several grants; her works are held
in numerous public collections, including at Kunsthaus Zürich, at the MMK in
Frankfurt am Main, and at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, curator of the House of Photography.
Curatorial assistance: Viktoria Rochambeau, curatorial fellow at the House of
Photography.
RESIDUAL SKY marked a shift in my practice from machine-based production toward a bodily, handmade process in the colour darkroom. For the exhibition in Hamburg, I continued working with fragments of sky and tree canopies extracted from photographs held in the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection in Bristol.
In Hamburg, however, the cycle became less self-contained. Negatives originating in other sequences entered the work, allowing earlier image clusters to recur and change through a new production cycle. The fragment Under Contamination describes this permeability: images do not remain within the bodies of work to which they were initially assigned, but circulate, overlap and generate new relations. It is also a description of the conditions in which the works are made.
As the hand-printing process unfolds, the chemistry gradually moves toward exhaustion, making each work part of a material and temporal sequence.