Past
Zina Saro-Wiwa: The Illicit Gin Institute Assemblies
For this commissioned series by Active Cultures, British-Nigerian artist Zina Saro-Wiwa presented the inaugural public Illicit Gin Institute Assemblies; three special evenings in Fall 2021, produced in partnership with the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and hosted at the Schindler House in West Hollywood. The Illicit Gin Institute is a radical creative think tank founded by the artist that is dedicated to the exploration of a Nigerian spirit historically known as “illicit gin.” The project is an extension of the artist’s practice, which centers the environment, land use, and indigenous African botanicals, and serves as both a reclamation and celebration of the Niger Delta. Bridging the two oil towns of Port Harcourt and Los Angeles, Saro-Wiwa invests in the radical potential of storytelling and the shared experience of taste and ritual to improve the fate of each, while rooting our collective experience in Los Angeles to these spirits. The Assemblies featured tastings from the artist’s craft distillery in Port Harcourt, where botanical Sarogua Palm Wine Spirits are produced by her team; a performance lecture given by Saro-Wiwa; a conversation with UCLA Professor of Geography and Food Historian Judith Carney; a storytelling session featuring actor Constance Ejuma and an acapella performance by Saro-Wiwa alongside singers and performers Kara Mack and Ashley Maher.
The Illicit Gin Institute offers a framework for exploring the ways in which spirits and botanicals interact and how they illuminate histories. Through this practice, Saro-Wiwa contemplates how gin, as a spirit, can be used to explore spirituality in our conceptions of environmentalism. Through the Institute, she pays particular reverence to African botanicals and the bush nurses who cultivate and nurture the land. This regard and acknowledgement of indigenous epistemologies is not only central to these Assemblies, but is indicative of the greater mindfulness with which Saro-Wiwa imbues her spirits. Her practice is invested in not only honoring the product but the knowledge and rituals of land practices in Ogoniland. The Institute acts as a vehicle to highlight the colonial and environmental histories, poetic implications, and spiritual cartographies of West African spirits and native African botanicals, and to make personal, bodily and spiritual connections through tastings of the specially made gins.
As Saro-Wiwa remarks: “For me these Assemblies are portals where we encounter the subcutaneous layers of life. Where this liquor and botanicals interact, create, instruct. Where flora is alive. This is about bringing a mindful, contemplative energy into drinking culture. These Assemblies will be a wonderful opportunity to explore the very idea of ‘spirit.’ The history of distilled spirits is alchemical and to me occupies a very powerful nexus at which poetry and mystery meet science. In many ways I feel gin is the perfect vehicle to explore the notion of spirituality in our conception of environmentalism.”
For Saro-Wiwa each bottle of gin is the landscape distilled; they contain the spirit of the land.
About the Artist
Zina Saro-Wiwa
About our Partner
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is a multidisciplinary, experimental center for art and architecture that operates from a constellation of historic architectural sites and contemporary exhibition spaces. Offering a year-round schedule of exhibitions and events, the MAK Center presents programming that challenges conventional notions of architectural space and relationships between the creative arts. It is headquartered in the landmark Schindler House (R.M. Schindler, 1922) in West Hollywood; operates a residency program and exhibition space at the Mackey Apartments (R.M. Schindler, 1939) and runs more intimate programming at the Fitzpatrick-Leland House (R.M. Schindler, 1936) in Los Angeles. The MAK Center encourages exploration of practical and theoretical ideas in art and architecture by engaging the center’s places, spaces, and histories. Its programming includes exhibitions, lectures, symposia, discussions, performances, music series, publication projects, salons, architecture tours, and new work commissions.
Event Details
DATE: September 25, October 30, November 20, 2021
LOCATION: The Schindler House at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture