THE SKINNY
Art
Photo: Ruth Clark At the shore, everything touches, 2021, Tako Taal. Installation view at Dundee Contemporary Arts
February 2022 — Feature
Infinite Loop We meet Tako Taal to learn more about about her expansive DCA solo exhibition, At the shore, everything touches Interview: Adam Benmakhlouf
S
ome objects are carefully arranged on the wall by the entrance of Glasgow-based artist Tako Taal’s solo exhibition at DCA, At the shore, everything touches. These include four photos, a newspaper clipping in a polypocket, a detailed drawing of a chair, and an old calculator that reads ‘1987’. The objects were the belongings of Taal’s father Seedy Taal, who died in 1990. “All the documents [were] collected after his death then passed on to me, some at a very early age then others more recently.” Taal’s father’s works and belongings form one important basis for Taal to consider the changing nature of Juffureh, her family’s home
village in The Gambia. Historically a trade post and fort during the transatlantic slave trade, the island is also near Kunta Kinteh Island, named after the central protagonist in Alex Haley’s 1976 bestselling novel Roots: a young man taken from The Gambia when he was 17, and sold into slavery. Roots also tells the story of seven generations of Kunta Kinteh’s descendants. Since the release of the book and the hugely popular film adaptations from the 1970s, there has been a touristic interest in Juffureh and at one point in the 33 minute film work SAMT utterance_01 (how a name becomes a step, a rhythm, a loop), a tour guide leads a small crowd who walk — 30 —
from one side of the frame to the other, as the camera films the mainly white group from a fixed position and at a distance. There seems to be a patient observation by Taal of the visitors, who form part of – as described in the press release – an “ethically complex tourist industry”. I ask Taal how she balances the competing demands of publicity and privacy when making an exhibition that pivots on items of close personal significance. “That question has basically been what I’ve been trying to understand by making this work. I think about what someone when I did a residency in Dakar said: what goes in the work? What is just for you, and what goes alongside it?
