Ranti Bam is an artist for whom creation unfolds as a process of becoming one with her sculptural work. Clay, for her, resonates with ancestral continuity inscribed over time. Bam draws inspiration from Ifa: a word in Yoruba that means both “divination” (ifá) and “to pull close” (I–fàá). This dual meaning suggests clay is both the substance through which her form and meaning merge, and – because, like all matter, it is inhabited by spirits – a collaborator on the work. Thus conceived, Bam’s sculptures are portals where spirits and the living encounter one another.
In the Arsenale, Bam’s five sculptures, which share the title Ifa Ile Oja – Black Ifa, stand as totemic guardians. They function as devotional objects carrying spirits – spirits embodied as form. These guardians protect and preserve, filling the room with quiet authority. They orient the viewer to the possibility that within the hollow, womb-like interiors of these vessels, an ecosystem is being birthed. The black clay here enters into dialogue with the architecture around it. The pre-industrial bricks of the Arsenale itself were also shaped by labouring hands, fabricating earth over time. This encounter brings into conversation ancestral modes of making and the mechanisms of capitalist production.
—Cindy Sissokho
